Can You Help

Isidro Martínez has just sent me a photograph of a pterosaur skull in the Museum Mensch und Natur in Münich, Germany.  It displays a very good crest and the teeth are preserved mainly in situ.
The fossil is new to me and I would like to know more about it.  The museum display has no label or information and I have been unable to contact the staff directly. Can any one help with information on the specimen?

Axial Skeleton

Recently, I have been asked to identify a number of pterosaur vertebrae.  Most of them were of small theropod dinosaur cervicals from the Kem-Kem formation in Morocco.  Pterosaur vertebrae in isolation requires a skilled eye to identify them, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at the axial skeleton of Pteranodon as the vertebrae are quite well documented.  I am going to gloss over the pectoral and pelvic girdles here.

This is a drawing from the website of the combined atlas and axis and the first cervical vertebra of pteranodon.  It is based on a drawing by Eaton.  Notice the pneumatic foramen (pn) where an air sac tube would pass to permit the interior of the bone to be filled with air.  This considerably lightens the skeleton for flight - pneumatic bones are also found in theropod dinosaurs like T-Rex and in the suropods.

The dorsal vertebrae of most pterosaurs are very short and have attachments for ribs.

Sacral vertebrae are fused and support the pelvis.  There are no articular surfaces and the vertebrae are joined by suture jointing, known as ankylosis.

Caudals are short and uninspiring and often look like the caudals of many other species, so in isolation they are indistinguishable from ichthyosaurs and many other large vertebrates.

The axial skeleton is seen to be arranged in functional sections.  The pectoral and pelvic girdles have been omitted here.

Ax is the combined atlas and axis which joins the spine to the skull.  This was quite a solid bone.

A shows the cervical vertebrae that make up the neck.  In Pteranodon, these were sturdy and had large dorsal spines to anchor the muscles that positioned the skull, with its large occipital head crest.  The joints had a good range of movement.

B is the Notarium.  This is a region of the spine where the thoraxic vertebrae are ankylose and support a fused region of bone that articulates with the scapulae.  The scapulo-coracoid is a strong bone that was anchored at the notarium and the sternum.  This forms the pectoral girdle which had to take the strain of the wings in flight.

C is a region where the dorsal vertebrae are not fused.  This region gave a small amount of flexion between two very solid and rigid regions of the back.  These few vertebrae held floating ribs.

D is the sacral region.  Like the thoraxic vertebrae attached to the notarium, the sacrals were fused and attached to the pelvis.

E In pterodactyloid pterosaurs, the caudal vertebrae were simple and very lightly muscled.

Half of the length of the axial skeleton in pteranodon is neck.  The neck is of a similar length to the skull.  The spine behind this region is mostly rigid, forming a solid box which gives the skeleton a sturdy structure to stabilise the wings in relation to the body, when the animal is in flight.  This was a very well adapted animal for flight.

Most large pterosaur axial skeletons show close similarities to pteranodon.  Most of the small pterosaurs also have these overall features, with minor variations.  This type of spine is essential for flying animals and this principle structure is also seen in all flying birds.

The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013

There is a paper being reviewed in Parliament which may have an impact on anyone who publishes on-line in the UK.  The regulations are currently in draft form and may be due to amendment before being put on the statute books.

The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013 should clarify the requirements of non-printed deposits within the UK.  This legislation is expected to have an impact on publications made via websites and downloads.  At present, it looks as if such publications will require an ISBN number, but it is unclear if this applies to all such publications or to future publications.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2013/9780111533703/contents/

The Pterosaur Database is reviewing some of its pages in case there is a legal requirement to record and declare downloads to a central repository.  The current legal repositories are:

• British Library (“BL”)
• Bodleian Library, Oxford (“Bodleian”)
• University Library, Cambridge (“CUL”)
• Library of Trinity College, Dublin (“TCD”)
• National Library of Wales (“NLW”)
• National Library of Scotland (“NLS”)

The new legislation will, in its present form, permit harvesting of documents from the Internet to the repositories for archiving and for public access at the repositories.  There is an issue that sales of texts and DVD/ music downloads need protecting, but this is not finalised at this point.

The Pterosaur Database has undergone a global update in the last 2 weeks to ensure that the bulk of its content is current.  many thanks to the work of Hike Hanson for his species list, which has formed a key part of the update.  Also thanks to Lorna Steel for her listing of the NHM London specimens which has allowed me to update this important collection. There are some issues over consensus in some of the updates, but the classification of pterosaurs has always been in a state of flux, so the data needs to be viewed as a guide rather than a final version.

On-Line Museum Lists

This week I finally got around to writing the software for the museum collections listings.  The pages will generate a list of all specimens held on The Pterosaur Database for museums selected, to give a workable listing.  The non UK museums may be type and figured specimens only in some cases, until the lists are updated.

To search for museum specimens on-line, the user will be asked for the country name.  This should be entered in English wherever possible.

On select, the list of museum names on the database will be presented for that country.  If there is a null return, the country has no holdings that are recorded.  Simply choose the number against the museum and enter it into the box at the end of the listing.  Pressing select will generate a list of all specimens recorded on The Pterosaur Database against that museum.

For some collections, the list may be quite long.  In the case shown, there are 104 specimens listed.
The old museum listings are still available, but they will no longer be updated.  Like all of the searches on The Pterosaur Database, the data displayed is ephemoral.  It can be printed or copied and pasted, but it cannot be saved to disc.
If anyone wishes to include data that is not held, then it can be sent by E-mail or added to the speciens pages for inclusion.

School Pages update

 The schools pages for The Pterosaur Database were assembled in a hurry from scraps and bits of other website material.  I have now rewritten the pages to give some basic and useful information based on previous student enquiries.

 The pages are basic, but they are intended to be presented in  a simple to understand format.  For more detailed information, The Pterosaur Database main pages are available, but there is an assumed knowledge for the main pages and some students may need to use the simple format for basic knowledge first.

The additional update is one I have been meaning to do for some time.  More images have been added to the Free Download page to allow students to enhance their coursework with useful and approved graphics.  These pages may be developed over the next few months to include simple PowerPoint presentations and downloadable text worksheets.

Fractured Wing Bones

A number of wing bone fractures are known to have occurred in pterosaur specimens around the wrist area (Wing metacarpal and first phalange joint).  I have puzzled over why this should be the case and have not found a satisfactory explanation until now.

This Pterodactylus from the Solenhofen Limestone in Bavaria shows a fracture of the first wing phalange near to the joint with the wing metacarpal.  This appears to be a stress fracture at a weak point in the bone.  It is not typical of a failure that would occur during flight or in  predatory conflict.

The same type of fracture can be seen in the X-ray of this Tapejarid fossil, where the wing metacarpal has been broken near to the joint.  Such fractures would have collapsed one wing, making it impossible to fly.  If this type of fracture occurred causing the pterosaur to fall into water, the injury would probably have been fatal.  In both of these cases, the fracture resulted in the death of these animals.

Similar fractures can be seen on isolated bone ends of medium sized pterosaurs.  These fracture patterns are not uncommon across the order as a whole, but are seldom seen in smaller individuals.

Mike Habib has been postulating the use of quadrupedal launching for large pterosaurs for some time now and his ideas are received with some caution.  However, the biology and anatomical structure of the wing bones in such a launch would impose stress on the bone structures which, in some cases, would explain their occasional fractures.  I consider it unlikely that pterosaurs would use this launch method across all genera as a prime method of launch, but the functionality and energy conservation of such a launch method seems to me to suggest that many species of pterosaur could take advantage of this type of take off strategy.

From my own experiments with pterosaur wing efficiency in gliding, it is clear that this method of launch is very practical, especially in species with larger wing areas and larger wing spans.  It also seems that apparently older animals have relatively thinner bone cortex thickness to bone diameter ratios, making the bones more likely to be affected by take-off stress in quadrupedal launch.

I do not have conclusive data on this matter, but there is a potential thesis here for someone intent enough to take on the task.

Habib M. B., 2008, Comparative evidence for quadrupedal launch in pterosaurs. P161-168, In: Flugsaurier: Pterosaur papers in honour of Peter Wellnhofer. 2008. Hone D. W. E. and Buffetaut E. (eds). Zitteliana B, 28. 264pp

Habib M., 2011, Solving the pterosaur size problem: Quadrupedal launch in the Pterosauria, Los Angeles County Museum

Spammers

On Christmas day a number of entries were made on the Pterosaur Database on-line species list.  287 in fact.  They were all random text characters and links to drug sales websites, selling sex aids and other erotica.  Someone had been entering and pasting data manually, as this is the only way the website will accept entries on-line.  What kind of person would spend Christmas Day in this way?

These entries were deleted as soon as they were noticed and we have now updated the entry page to reject any links to E-mail or websites.  Data can still be added to the on-line site,but if a link of any kind is entered, the page will fail to write to the database.  I am please that I made the on-line database read only and installed a parallel entry database.  If such entries had been made directly to the full database, It may have been months before it was noticed.

The same modifications have been made to the Bibliography database uploader and the tests have worked well, so this type of spamming will be less likely in future.