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Pterosaurs

feen5

feen5

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Feb 9, 2004
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Interesting article from the BBC website. I've always found the pterosaurs the most fasinating of the dinosaur groups.

Flying reptile mystery 'solved'

The specimen belonged to the species Tupuxuara
UK scientists say they have solved the mystery of why prehistoric flying reptiles grew crests on their heads.
A rare skull specimen found in Brazil shows the crest appeared at puberty, suggesting it was used to attract attention from the opposite sex.

University of Portsmouth experts say pterosaurs, which ruled the air during the time of the dinosaurs, flaunted their headgear in sexual displays.

The findings are published in the journal Palaeontology.

Palaeobiologist Dr Darren Naish said the crest was a signal of sexual maturity; used like a peacock's tail to attract a mate.

"It would have been like a gigantic cockerel's comb, a brightly-coloured striking structure used in display," he told the BBC News website.

"We don't know this but we imagine they would have bobbed it around and used it to attract other pterosaurs."

Rare specimen

The theory is based on the skull of a species of pterosaur known as Tupuxuara, which was unearthed recently in north-east Brazil.

Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods
They were the first actively flying vertebrates and evolved many different forms
Pterosaurs are thought to belong to a group of reptiles known as archosaurs, which includes crocodiles, dinosaurs and birds

It was a rare discovery; only a handful of fossil specimens exist in the world and all the others are the remains of adults.

Dr Naish and colleague Dr David Martill examined the skull and found that the crest was different in the juvenile.

Rather than forming one large triangular crest of bone extending from the snout to the back of the head, it was made up of two pieces.

One crest came from the back of the skull and the other from the front of the snout. The crest that sprouted from the front grew backwards, only fusing to form one large crest when the pterosaur reached puberty.

"This is a significant find as it links the growth of the crest to physical maturity and therefore presumably to sex," said Dr Naish.

"The specimen was extremely rare and it is great to be able to piece together a little bit more details about pterosaurs."
 
These scientists obviously didn't think to test a model of the pterosaur's head in a wind tunnel to see if it was used as a rudder or aerofoil.

I mean, the pterosaurs might have only learned to fly properly when they had grown the crests.
 
They probably have tested that theory as well but thought that the mating display theory was a better one. There are countless examples of modern day creatures that show exactly the same differences between young and mature adults, especially in the bird world (and before anyone points it out i'm am not in any way saying that birds are desended from pterosaurs i do believe they are desended from dinosaurs but not from the pterosaurs). I suppose there won't be anyway of proving their theory for certain until they find more examples of young and adult fossils, and that may take some time.
 
Newly published analyses of pterosaur fossils from China indicate the species nicknamed 'Monkeydactyl' owing to its opposable digits was capable of climbing and probably lived in trees. This also suggests 'Monkeydactyl' may represent the earliest known animal equipped with opposable thumbs.
‘Monkeydactyl’ may be the oldest known creature with opposable thumbs

The winged reptile’s dexterity may have helped it climb trees during the age of dinosaurs

Future Jurassic Park films could feature one weird new beast in the menagerie: a pterosaur nicknamed Monkeydactyl for its opposable thumbs.

This flying reptile from the Jurassic Period may be the earliest known animal that could touch the insides of its thumbs to the insides of its other fingers, researchers report online April 12 in Current Biology. Such dexterity probably allowed Monkeydactyl to climb trees about 160 million years ago, perhaps to feed on insects and other prey that nonclimbing pterosaurs did not ... The latter half of the creature’s official name, Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, comes from the words “opposite” and “thumb” in ancient Greek.

Monkeydactyl’s fossilized remains, unearthed in northeastern China in 2019, are embedded in rock. ...

Those scans helped confirm that the skeleton had a well-preserved opposable thumb on each hand. “Almost all of the modern animals that have opposable thumbs use them to climb trees,” Pêgas says, including primates and some tree frogs. That evidence, along with the apparent flexibility of Monkeydactyl’s joints, suggests this species was well suited to clambering through tree branches. ...
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SOURCE: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monkeydactyl-jurassic-pterosaur-oldest-fossil-opposable-thumbs
 
Here are the bibliographic details and summary from the published research report. The full report is accessible at the link below.

X. Zhou et al.
A new darwinopteran pterosaur reveals arborealism and an opposed thumb.
Current Biology. Published online April 12, 2021.
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.030.

Summary
Pterosaurs, which lived during the Mesozoic, were the first known vertebrates to evolve powered flight. Arboreal locomotion has been proposed for some taxa, and even considered to have played a role in the origin of pterosaur flight. Even so, there is still need for comprehensive quantitative ecomorphological analyses. Furthermore, skeletal adaptations correlated to specialized lifestyles are often difficult to recognize and interpret in fossils. Here we report on a new darwinopteran pterosaur that inhabited a unique forest ecosystem from the Jurassic of China. The new species exhibits the oldest record of palmar (or true) opposition of the pollex, which is unprecedented for pterosaurs and represents a sophisticated adaptation related to arboreal locomotion. Principal-coordinate analyses suggest an arboreal lifestyle for the new species but not for other closely related species from the same locality, implying a possible case of ecological niche partitioning. The discovery adds to the known array of pterosaur adaptations and the history of arborealism in vertebrates. It also adds to the impressive early bloom of arboreal communities in the Jurassic of China, shedding light on the history of forest environments.

SOURCE: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00369-9
 
I own a small pterosaur tooth. According to the site I purchased it from:

This specimen is an individual Pterosaur tooth. It comes from the Kem Kem beds of Morocco and is associated with Coloborhynchus, a Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous with an estimated wingspan of 5m (15ft).

pterosaur.jpg
 

Pterosaur bones found in Australia reveal world’s oldest flying reptile lived there 107 million years ago​

Palaeontologists came to that conclusion after examining two pieces of prehistoric bone extracted from Dinosaur Cove – a fossil-bearing site in the Australian state of Victoria – more than three decades ago.

The samples turned out to be the oldest remains of pterosaurs ever recovered from the country, according to the study published in science journal History Biology on Wednesday.

The giant creature was the first vertebrate to evolve the ability of flight and lived alongside dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era which started 252 million years ago.

Experts from the Perth-based Curtin University and Museums Victoria, in Melbourne, examined bones from two individuals, including a wing bone belonging to the first juvenile pterosaur ever reported in Australia.
A piece of pelvis bone was found to have come from a pterosaur with a wingspan exceeding two meters (6.5 ft). Some pterosaurs had wingspans of more than 10 meters (33 ft).

The lead author of the study published Wednesday, Adele Pentland from Curtin University, told CNN that the discovery showed the massive creatures flew over Australia tens of millions of years ago, despite harsh conditions during the Cretaceous Period (145 million to 66 million years ago), when Victoria was in darkness for weeks on end.

“Australia was further south than it is today,” she said, adding the location where the two specimens were recovered would have been in the polar circle at the time.

Fewer than 25 sets of pterosaur remains belonging to four species have been found in Australia since the 1980s, she said. By comparison, in places like Brazil and Argentina more than 100 sets have been retrieved at individual sites, she added.

Pentland, a PhD student, attributed the three decades it took to confirm the present specimens to the lack of enthusiasm about the species in the country, until she got hold of them and “finally gave them the moment in the sun.”
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For the most amazing depiction of pterosaurs (they are not dinosaurs), check out Prehistoric Planet series from BBC Studios. On Apple TV+.
 
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