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TOPIC: Giant Pterosaur
Blobrana


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RE: Giant Pterosaur
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Quetzalcoatlus: the evil, pin-headed, toothy nightmare monster that wants to eat your soul

Azhdarchid pterosaurs, and palaeoart memes. Azhdarchids were mostly large to gigantic, long-skulled Cretaceous pterosaurs, noted for their enormous wingspans (up to 10 m or so in the case of Quetzalcoatlus from the USA and Hatzegopteryx from Romania), elongate necks, and long, stork-like jaws.



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Blobrana


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Cretaceous Pterosaurs
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High diversity of flying reptiles in England 110 million years ago

Brazilian paleontologists Taissa Rodrigues, of the Federal University of Espirito Santo, and Alexander W. A. Kellner, of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, have just presented the most extensive review yet available of toothed pterosaurs from the Cretaceous of England. The study features detailed taxonomic information, diagnoses and photographs of 30 species and was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Pterosaurs from the Cretaceous of England were first described by British naturalists Richard Owen and Harry Seeley in the 19th century, when little was known about the diversity of the group, resulting in the description of dozens of species, all based on very fragmentary remains, represented mostly by the tips of the snouts of these animals. However, more recent findings of pterosaur fossils have challenged views on their diversity.
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Blobrana


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Vectidraco daisymorrisae
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Isle of Wight girl Daisy Morris has dinosaur named after her

A nine-year-old girl from the Isle of Wight has had a dinosaur named in her honour after a fossil she found turned out to be an undiscovered species.
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Blobrana


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Daisy's Isle of Wight Dragon and why China has what Europe does not

We've named another new pterosaur! Once again, the open-access online journal PLOS ONE hosts a paper that I and colleagues (Martin Simpson and Gareth Dyke, both of the University of Southampton) have published on a new taxon (Naish et al. 2013).
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Blobrana


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Guidraco venator
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  New Toothed Flying Reptile Found from the Early Creataceous of Western Liaoning, China

Although paleontologists have greatly increase the pterosaur diversity in the last decades, particularly due to discoveries made in western Liaoning, China, very little is known regarding pterosaur biogeography. An international team led by Dr. WANG Xiaolin, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, described a new pterosaur, Guidraco venator gen. et sp. nov., from the Early Creataceous Jiufotang Formation, western Lianing, China, adding significantly to our knowledge of pterosaur distribution and enhancing the diversity of cranial anatomy found in those volant creatures, researchers report in the April 2012 issue of the journal of Naturwissenschaften.
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Blobrana


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Pterosaur
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For the first time, scientists have unearthed an ancient armoured fish that was fossilised in the act of drowning a pterosaur in a toxic Jurassic-era lake some 120 million years ago, revealing that the flying reptiles were victims of a wide variety of carnivores.
Pterosaurs ruled the skies during the age of dinosaurs, but still light did not always ensure them safety, according to researchers who have discovered five fossilised remains of the long-tailed pterosaur Rhamphorhychus apparently within the jaws of the ancient armoured predatory fish Aspidorhynchus.
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Blobrana


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Qinglongopterus guoi
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Title: A new rhamphorhynchid (Pterosauria: Rhamphorhynchidae) from the Middle/ Upper Jurassic of Qinglong, Hebei Province, China
Authors: JUNCHANG LU, DAVID M. UNWIN, BO ZHAO, CHUNLING GAO & CAIZHI SHEN

A heavily compressed, but nearly complete fossil skeleton recovered from the Middle/Upper Jurassic Tiaojishan Forma-tion of Mutoudeng, Qinglong County, Hebei Province, China, represents a new genus and species of long-tailed pterosaur, Qinglongopterus guoi gen. et sp. nov. The holotype and only known specimen has an estimated forelimb length of 0.18m. The new taxon is distinguished by a relatively short skull, a remarkably short pteroid with a distinctive knob-like distal expansion, and a prepubis with a relatively slender distal process. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrates that Qinglongopterus is a member of Rhamphorhynchidae, exhibiting many of the unique character states found in members of this clade.
Qinglongopterus is strikingly similar to Rhamphorhynchus and more closely related to this taxon than to any other rhamphorhynchine, this pairing is supported by morphometric data and several synapomorphies (short, broad nasal process of the maxilla; forelimb length more than four times that of the hind limb; wing-phalanx one more than twice the length of the tibia). Qinglongopterus demonstrates that the highly derived skeletal morphology of Rhamphorhynchus, known only from the latest Jurassic (Tithonian) of Europe, had already appeared by the start of the Late Jurassic. This hints at evolu-tionary stasis in Rhamphorhynchinae, a phenomenon seemingly also present in two other clades of basal pterosaurs, Anurognathidae and Scaphognathinae, and contrasting sharply with basal monofenestratans which appear to have under-gone extensive evolutionary change during the same interval.

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Blobrana


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Cuspicephalus scarfi
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The fossil of a prehistoric flying reptile discovered in Dorset has been named after satirical artist Gerald Scarfe.
The political cartoonist was chosen because of his caricatures of Margaret Thatcher which depicted her as a pointy-nosed "Torydactyl".
The 33cm long pterosaur, discovered in Kimmeridge Bay, has been named Cuspicephalus scarfi.
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Blobrana


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RE: Giant Pterosaur
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Tiny fossil fragment reveals giant-but ugly-truth

New research from the Universities of Portsmouth and Leicester has identified a small fossil fragment at the Natural History Museum, London as being part of a giant pterosaur  - setting a new upper limit for the size of winged and toothed animals.
Dr David Martill from the University of Portsmouth and Dr David Unwin from the University of Leicester examined the fossil - which consisted of the tip of a pterosaur snout that had been in the Museum collections since 1884.
Their identification of the fossil as being part of the world's largest toothed pterosaur has been published in Cretaceous Research.
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Pteranodon
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Unique specimen is first of its kind discovered as far south as Texas, where it flew over a vast ancient sea

Fossil bones discovered in Texas are from the left wing of an ancient flying reptile that died 89 million years ago, representing what may be the world's earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature Pteranodon, says palaeontologist Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. If the reptile is Pteranodon, it would be the first of its kind discovered as far south as Texas within the ancient Western Interior Seaway, said Myers, who identified the fossils.
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