Pterosaurs Took Flight on All Fours

Pterosaurs took flight using all fours, a discovery that flies in the face of previous research on the ancient reptiles, a new study says.

Two of the giant creatures' "legs" were extremely strong wings, which when folded, created "knuckles" that allowed the animals to walk and jump (above left, the pterosaur known as Hatzegotpteryx in an artist's rendering).

The way a bird lifts off—using two legs—doesn't make sense for pterosaurs, which would have had to heave their 500 pounds (227 kilograms) airborne using only their hind legs, the study says.

Instead, the "remarkably strong" animals apparently made a leaping launch in less than a second from flat ground, with no aid from wind or ledges.

"Most people are familiar with images of pterosaurs as very skinny, almost emaciated-looking things—basically a hang glider with teeth," study author Michael B. Habib, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told National Geographic News. "They're actually built a lot more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Urkel."

Habib compared bone strength in 20 species of modern birds and 3 species of pterosaurs to develop the new model, announced yesterday by the journal Zitteliana.

The finding is also consistent with the idea that bigger animals require more overall brawn to power their movement, Habib added.

"We put V8 engines in our biggest, heaviest cars, not V4s, like the one in my Camry."

—Christine Dell'Amore

Illustration by Mark Witton

Read more 

New Giant Toothless Pterosaur Found

With a wingspan longer than a full-size sedan, a new species of pterosaur dubbed Lacusovagus magnificens, or "magnificent lake wanderer," is the largest of its kind yet found, a new study reports.

The ancient flying reptile (seen at left in an artist's reconstruction) is also the first Chaoyangopterid—a family of toothless pterosaurs—found outside of China, noted Mark Witton, the University of Portsmouth researcher who named the species based on a partial skull fossil.

Witton made his discovery after examining remains from Brazil's Crato formation, layers of limestone that roughly date to the early Cretaceous period, about 115 million years ago.

The site, once a brackish lagoon, has yielded several other pterosaur species, but so far the skull fragments Witton analyzed represent the only existing Lacusovagus fossil.

The skull's size suggests that the Brazilian pterosaur had a roughly 16-foot (5-meter) wingspan and stood about 3.3 feet (a meter) high at its shoulders. With its long neck and jaw, the animal would have seemed as tall as a typical adult human (right).

"Some of the previous examples we have from this family in China are just 60 centimeters [24 inches] long—as big as the skull of the new species," Witton said in a university statement.


"Put simply, it dwarfs any Chaoyangopterid we've seen before by miles." 

Read More

Pterosaur "Runway" Found; Shows Birdlike Landing Style

Like a prehistoric dance-step diagram, a patch of fossilized beach in France spells out the sequence of a pterosaur's landing, an August 2009 study says.

The "runway" suggests the birds landed like most modern birds, flapping their wings to slow down just before hitting the ground.

Photograph and illustration courtesy Jean-Michel Mazin via Kevin Padian


The first fossil footprints of a landing pterosaur have been discovered, a new study says.

The tracks offer rare insight into a dinosaur-age mystery: How did these flying reptiles move?

Whereas walking dinosaurs left footprints, a pterosaur in mid-flight would have left little more than droppings.

This critical difference has made analyzing pterosaur flight much harder than studying the gaits of their dinosaur cousins.

The 140-million-year-old pterosaur tracks, found along a long-gone lagoon in what is now southwestern France, could help change that.

Flying-reptile footprints are so common at the late-Jurassic-period site that paleontologists call it Pterosaur Beach. But from the start, it was obvious the newfound cluster is one of a kind.

"When my co-author showed it to me and said what he thought it was, it seemed both obvious and cool to me," said study co-author Kevin Padian at the University of California, Berkeley.

"It's great to have a landing track." 


How the Pterosaur Landed: Story in Stone

Like a dance-step diagram, the footstep fossils tell the sequence of the animal's movements as it landed.

The pterosaur first put its back feet down together and dragged its toes slightly. It then hopped back into the air for a moment before dropping onto its back feet a second time.

The flyer then looks to have lowered its wings, which had "hands" on either end, taken a step or two, turned, and walked off on all fours. (See "Pterosaurs Took Flight on All Fours.")

The relatively few landing tracks suggest that the pterosaur landed like most modern birds, flapping quickly right before landing to slow themselves down, the researchers say. (A few modern-day birds come in for a running landing, leaving lots of footprints.).

As exciting as the landing track is, Padian said, it's still solves only part of the mystery. "It would be equally cool to have a takeoff track." 

Read More

Toothy Texas Pterosaur Discovered; Soared Over Dallas

John Roach for National Geographic News

Long before six flags flew over Texas, a newfound species of winged reptile with an exceptionally toothy grin owned the skies over what is now the Lone Star State.

The recently discovered pterosaur, dubbed Aetodactylus halli, was identified based on a 95-million-year-old lower jawbone found outside of Dallas by amateur fossil hunter Lance Hall. 

The pterosaur had a relatively slender jaw filled with thin, needlelike teeth, which might have helped the creature pluck fish from the shallow sea that once covered the region, a new study says.

"It was hanging out near the ocean, and that is probably where it derived its food from," said study leader Timothy Myers, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

By comparing the jawbone to more complete pterosaur fossils, Myers and his team think A. halli was a medium-size animal with a nine-foot (three-meter) wingspan and a short tail.

Texas's Toothy Pterosaur a Rare Find

Pterosaurs ruled the skies from the late Triassic period, more than 200 million years ago, until dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago.

At 95 million years old, A. halli is one of the youngest members yet found in the Ornithocheiridae family of toothed pterosaurs, Myers said.

Despite being common elsewhere in the world, toothed pterosaur fossils are rare in Texas: A. halli is only the second ornithoceirid yet discovered in North America. 

The new pterosaur had 54 teeth in its lower jaw, which is an unusual amount for ornithoceirids, Myers added. Most other members of the family had just 30 lower jaw teeth. Only Boreopterus, a relative from the same time period found in China, is known to have had as many teeth as A. halli.

When the animal lived, a giant north-south interior seaway split North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, putting what is now Dallas underwater.

A. halli's jawbone was found in marine rocks exposed near a highway in Mansfield, southwest of Dallas, which would have been the southernmost end of the ancient sea. No other fossils from the animal have been unearthed nearby, Myers said.

"It could be that something caused the pterosaur to die and fall into the water," he said. "Decay started, and the lower jaw just fell off and got separated from the rest of the body."


Read More

Pterousaurs - Flying Dinosaurs!

Pteranodon, the most famous of all pterosaurs (American Museum of Natural History)

Pterosaurs ("winged lizards") hold a special place in the history of life on earth: they were the first creatures, other than insects, to successfully populate the skies. The evolution of pterosaurs roughly paralleled that of their terrestrial cousins, the dinosaurs.

Paleontologists have found indisputable proof that modern birds are descended not from pterosaurs, but from small, feathered, land-bound dinosaurs (in fact, if you could somehow compare the DNA of a pigeon, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Pteranodon, the first two would be more closely related to each other than either would be to the third). This is an example of what biologists call convergent evolution: nature has a way of finding the same solutions (wings, hollow bones, etc.) to the same problem (how to fly). Learn More About Pterousaurs Here
______________________________________________________________
Check out Bob's Dinosaur Blog !

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer and book author; one of his specialties is explaining scientific concepts and discoveries to both a lay and professional audience.

Bob Strauss is the author of two best-selling question-and-answer books that range across the expanse of science, biology, history and culture: The Big Book of What, How and Why (Main Street, 2005) and Who Knew? Hundreds & Hundreds of Questions & Answers for Curious Minds (Sterling Innovation, 2007).

Flying Dinosaurs: Eudimorphodon

Eudimorphodon was a pterosaur that was discovered in 1973 by Mario Pandolfi near Bergamo, Italy and described the same year by Rocco Zambelli. The nearly complete skeleton was retrieved from shale deposited during the Late Triassic (mid to late Norian stage), making Eudimorphodon the oldest pterosaur then known. It had a wingspan of about 100 centimetres (3.3 ft) and at the end of its long bony tail may have been a diamond-shaped flap like in the later Rhamphorhynchus. If so, the flap may have helped it steer while maneuvering in the air

Eudimorphodon showed a strong differentiation of the teeth, hence its name, which is derived from ancient Greek for "true dimorphic tooth". It also possessed a large number of these teeth, a total of 110 of them densely packed into a jaw only six centimeters long. The front of the jaw was filled with fangs, per side four in the upper jaw, two in the lower jaw, that rather abruptly gave way to a line of smaller multipointed teeth, 25 in the upper jaw, 26 in the lower jaw, most of which had five cusps, others three or even four.

The morphology of the teeth are suggestive of a piscivorous diet, which has been confirmed by preserved stomach contents containing the remains of fish of the genus Parapholidophorus.  The teeth were multi-cusped, and tooth wear shows that Eudimorphodon was able to crush or chew its food to some degree. Wear along the sides of these teeth suggests that Eudimorphodon also fed on hard-shelled invertebrates.

Flying Dinosaurs: Dorygnathus ("spear jaw")

 

 Dorygnathus banthensis restoration; the tail form is hypothetical

 

With its long tail and narrow wings, Dorygnathus was a good example of what paleontologists call a "rhamphorhynchoid" pterosaur.

Rhamphorhynchoids have been found almost exclusively in western Europe, though it's not clear if this is because they were confined to this geographical location or if conditions in early Jurassic Europe happened to be well-suited for fossil preservation.

The most notable feature of Dorygnathus was its long, intermeshing front teeth, which it almost certainly used to snag fish off the surface of the water and hold them firmly in its mouth. Although the fossil specimens discovered so far have been fairly small, as pterosaurs go, there's some speculation that adults of the species may have grown throughout their lives and attained wingspans of five or six feet.

A cast in the Urwelt-Museum Hauff at Holzmaden of UUPM R 156, a specimen sold by Bernhard Hauff to the University of Uppsala in 1925

Flying Dinosaurs - Dorygnathus

Dorygnathus (Dmitri Bogdanov)

With its long tail and narrow wings, Dorygnathus was a good example of what paleontologists call a "rhamphorhynchoid" pterosaur.

Rhamphorhynchoids have been found almost exclusively in western Europe, though it's not clear if this is because they were confined to this geographical location or if conditions in early Jurassic Europe happened to be well-suited for fossil preservation.

The most notable feature of Dorygnathus was its long, intermeshing front teeth, which it almost certainly used to snag fish off the surface of the water and hold them firmly in its mouth. Although the fossil specimens discovered so far have been fairly small, as pterosaurs go, there's some speculation that adults of the species may have grown throughout their lives and attained wingspans of five or six feet.

_______________________________________________________________
Check out Bob's Dinosaur Blog !

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer and book author; one of his specialties is explaining scientific concepts and discoveries to both a lay and professional audience.

Bob Strauss is the author of two best-selling question-and-answer books that range across the expanse of science, biology, history and culture: The Big Book of What, How and Why (Main Street, 2005) and Who Knew? Hundreds & Hundreds of Questions & Answers for Curious Minds (Sterling Innovation, 2007).

Flying Dinosaurs - Eudimorphodon

Although it's not nearly as well known as others of its kind, Eudimorphodon holds an important place in paleontology as one of the earliest pterosaurs: this tiny, winged reptile hopped around the shores of Europe a whopping 210 million years ago, during the late Triassic period. Eudimorphodon possessed the wing structure--forelimbs embedded in an extended flap of skin--characteristic of all pterosaurs, as well as a diamond-shaped appendage at the end of its tail that probably helped it to steer or to adjust its course in mid-air. (By the way, despite its name, Eudimorphodon wasn't particularly closely related to Dimorphodon, beyond the fact that they were both pterosaurs.)

_______________________________________________________________
Check out Bob's Dinosaur Blog !

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer and book author; one of his specialties is explaining scientific concepts and discoveries to both a lay and professional audience.

Bob Strauss is the author of two best-selling question-and-answer books that range across the expanse of science, biology, history and culture: The Big Book of What, How and Why (Main Street, 2005) and Who Knew? Hundreds & Hundreds of Questions & Answers for Curious Minds (Sterling Innovation, 2007).