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.

Mary Anning Weekend

The weekend of the 29th and 30th September is part of the Mary Anning Week event at the Lyme Regis Museum, Dorset.  Mary Anning was a prolific fossil collector who discovered several very well known marine reptiles from the Jurassic rocks and cliffs around Lyme Regis.  She also discovered one of the first recorded English Pterodactyles.

This specimen of Dimorphodon macronyx (then Pterodactylus macronyx) was collected from the Undercliff in the Lower Jurassic Blue Lias at Lyme Regis.  It was described by the Reverend Willaim Buckland in his 1829 paper and the specimen now resides in the Natural History Museum, London.

Buckland W., 1829

Several other specimens were found in the Lias following this discovery, including a skull, two tails and a near complete skeleton.  The skull, also now in the Natural History Museum, was drawn by Mary's brother Joseph, using reconstituted belemnite ink from the cliff fossils.  This early drawing is now in the Lyme Regis Museum.

Other illustrations have since been done using this method of ink drawing.  The Annings made a good living selling fossils from the Liassic Cliffs around Lyme.  Many of them can be found in museums around the UK and some have been sent to overseas customers.  The Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs are perhaps their most dramatic finds from this time.

Lyme Regis Museum

Old Photographs

A couple of days ago I received an enquiry about photographs of some of the obscure type specimens - the sort of fossils that are outside of the main stream of research because they are generally fragmentary remains.  To see if I could provide such photographs I searched my collection of images.  Very little joy in that search as I could only find two of the images, and they were of poor quality.  This inspired me to do a bit more with my negatives.

I do have some old photographs which go back to 1975 and they are mostly kept as negatives or 35mm slides.  This mandible of Rhamphocephalus was taken at the Natural History Museum, London, in 1976; then the British Museum of Natural History. It is digitised from a black and white negative using a film copier and it has remained good after 36 years in storage.

This image is of the upper and lower mandible of Istiodactylus in the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, taken in 1986.  The picture was taken using a cheap colour positive film and the chemistry of the slide has changed, degrading the image significantly.

Time is important in protecting old images.  The digital versions may often be less pixilated than good quality film images, but they do not degenerate in the same way.  I now keep all of my digital images on a separate hard drive in two files, my copyright and other peoples copyright.  This drive is backed up an a secure separate hard drive on a monthly basis and most of the images are also stored on a DVD disc.  This ensures that in the event of a crisis, some images will be preserved.

In my office are two boxes of slides and negatives which still need to be digitised.  Some have degraded considerably and may well never be recovered.

I am now looking for photographic images of the following specimens;

Natural History Museum, London
R176 Istiodactylus latidens
37002 Rhamphorhynchus longipes
42735 (Pterodactylus pulchellus) Pterodactylus micronyx
37990 (Pterodactylus longicollum) Diopocephalus longicollum
1640 (Cimoliornis diomedeus) Ornithocheirus diomedius

Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge
B54.443 (Ornithocheirus brachyrhinus)
B54.437 or B54.438 (Ornithocheirus carteri)
B54.499 (Ornithocheirus crassidens) Amblydectes crassidens
B54.544 (Ornithocheirus dentatus)
B54.444 (Ornithocheirus enchorhynchus)
B54.644 (Ornithocheirus eurygnathus) Amblydectes eurygnathus
87822 (Ornithocheirus huxleyi) Lonchodectes oweni
B54.835 (Ornithocheirus platystomus) Amblydectes platystomus
B54.440 (Ornithocheirus polyodon) Seeley 1870
B54.441 (Ornithocheirus scaphorhynchus) Lonchodectes scaphorhynchus

If you have such images that you are willing to share, please send them to pterosaur@ntlworld.com

Searching on-line Part Two

The Pterosaur Database is now on-line in a limited form.  The listing of museums with pterosaur specimens and the listing of collection material has been put on-line in a test format.  The data still needs some adjustment, but it is available for the first time for everyone to search.

The first search up is the specimen search, where you can enter the name of a species or genus and see what comes up.  The data search gives basic information like description, museum and catalogue number as well as a few notes in some cases.


It is also possible to search by specimen type and by Museum.  The museum search is in two phases - firstly the general information search by country, key name words and town/city.  A second search page gives a choice of matches, and a selection of the record number presents a specimen list, as shown below;

First page requiring general information.

Second page giving a choice of matches.

 

Third page showing the museum list of specimens, postal address, contact telephone number and website where available.

There are several museums with pterosaur material that are represented by only type and figured specimens.  Some museums that hold pterosaur material have not been visited and are therefore not included here.

This database is a read only system to protect the data at source. However, a parallel database has been set up into which new specimens can be added.  When the input has been verified, the entries will be included in the main database.  Corrections can also be entered here by adding the correct entry and describing the alteration in the Notes field.

Any comments on the functionality of the on-line system will be appreciated in order to adapt it to the needs of users.