tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post1575836920065786699..comments2024-03-23T12:02:36.626-07:00Comments on Mark P. Witton's Blog: 9 things you may not know about giant azhdarchid pterosaursMark Wittonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-54299883376608764242022-03-12T20:50:19.893-08:002022-03-12T20:50:19.893-08:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-27834178013303466132022-03-12T20:49:58.604-08:002022-03-12T20:49:58.604-08:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-12840079809787168722017-05-21T17:47:18.174-07:002017-05-21T17:47:18.174-07:00Would it be fair to say that so far no (zero) larg...Would it be fair to say that so far no (zero) large mature pterosaurs exhibit owl-like eyes forward binocular vision? Is there any indication that eye placement might change from chick to eyes on the sides adult as the skull (and perhaps crest) grew and eventually fused? The questions were actually inspired by thinking about how in The Lord of the Rings Eowyn (on foot) <br />fights a fell beast that the author agreed resembled a pterodactyl (although that was not his inspiration). I would not fancy the odds of her severing the neck from back to front with a one-handed sword (technically, probably a saber) – any thoughts? The fell beast would probably be something the dimensions of an azhdarchid - peterfzoll@yahoo.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-67003350667686919402016-07-06T06:04:18.498-07:002016-07-06T06:04:18.498-07:00Verry awesome! I love your articles! BTW, have you...Verry awesome! I love your articles! BTW, have you ever thought about creating a DeviantArt account? The paleo community misses you there!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17462434190412501051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-18852313015533289002016-07-06T06:03:43.052-07:002016-07-06T06:03:43.052-07:00Verry awesome! I love your articles! BTW, have you...Verry awesome! I love your articles! BTW, have you ever thought about creating a DeviantArt account? The paleo community misses you there!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17462434190412501051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-39100422422193943862015-04-16T18:56:11.200-07:002015-04-16T18:56:11.200-07:00My understanding is that Hatzegopteryx was indeed ...My understanding is that Hatzegopteryx was indeed adept at eating relatively heavy prey. It may well have been capable of eating prey up to the size of a human whole, and it could almost certainly have been highly effective as a storker.Pds3.14https://www.blogger.com/profile/01042151103642336762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-35650661019936100342015-04-16T18:55:53.404-07:002015-04-16T18:55:53.404-07:00My understanding is that Hatzegopteryx was indeed ...My understanding is that Hatzegopteryx was indeed adept at eating relatively heavy prey. It may well have been capable of eating prey up to the size of a human whole, and it could almost certainly have been highly effective as a storker.Pds3.14https://www.blogger.com/profile/01042151103642336762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-26043366065665092202014-11-30T12:44:53.910-08:002014-11-30T12:44:53.910-08:00I have heard somewhere that a certain Eurasian gia...I have heard somewhere that a certain Eurasian giant azhdarchid (the largest, the island giant-you know which one I mean) was very robustly built for hunting l=big prey, is this valid?BKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03759189747932749283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-83119190526009518332013-09-05T03:16:30.436-07:002013-09-05T03:16:30.436-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14264532599014333308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-14678522955095208532013-09-02T05:05:52.007-07:002013-09-02T05:05:52.007-07:00Young (1964) defined Dsungaripteroidea as, in esse...Young (1964) defined Dsungaripteroidea as, in essence, a clade comprised of notarium-bearing pterosaurs. The definition has since been tweaked by several different authors to mean quite different things, so any mention of 'Dsungaripteroidea' needs a qualifier to make it clear which definition we're following.Mark Wittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-48375014590184341352013-08-30T05:35:19.541-07:002013-08-30T05:35:19.541-07:00I thought that Dsungaripteroidea as "all nota...I thought that Dsungaripteroidea as "all notarium based pterosaurs" was only used once? At any rate, I think the context was on the Germanodactylus + Dsungaripteridae context.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-2657978836640641442013-08-29T10:31:34.025-07:002013-08-29T10:31:34.025-07:00The New Zealand specimen (a partial ulna and tooth...The New Zealand specimen (a partial ulna and tooth, if memory serves) is pretty undiagnostic, other than being belonging to a reasonably sized pterodactyloid. It doesn't really help us establish the ranges of anything. Note that isolated 'pterosaur' teeth are often misidentified titanosaur or croc teeth, too.<br /><br />There's need to be careful with definitions of Dsungaripteroidea, too. There's a bit of a slop about the use of that name, referring to either a Germanodactylus + dsungaripterid group in some phylogenies (which has a stratigraphic range of Late Jurassic - mid-Cretaceous) or a much broader clade of pterodactyloids (essentially ornithocherioids, azhdarchoids and dsungaripterids). The latter is certainly a long lived group, but represents a clade of pterosaurs well above the 'family' level we're working at here. <br /><br />As for <i>Piksi</i>, I'm not 100% convinced it represents an ornithocheiroid.Mark Wittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-61226902139894335832013-08-27T08:15:27.374-07:002013-08-27T08:15:27.374-07:00About about the New Zealand pterosaur?
"The ...About about the New Zealand pterosaur?<br /><br />"The only pterosaur fossils described from New Zealand are the<br />distal extremity of a left ulna and a partial tooth, collected from<br />the Late Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian) Mata series at<br />Mangahouanga Stream on the North Island (Wiffen and Molnar,<br />1988; Molnar and Wiffen, 1994). The identity of this specimen is<br />also uncertain, although Wiffen and Molnar (1988) reported that<br />the ulna was most similar to Anhanguera araripensis (sensu Kellner and Tomida, 2000) and Dsungaripterus weii (sensu Young,1964)."<br /><br /><br />If it's an ornithocheirid, it would make Ornithocheiridae as long lived as Azhdarchidae (alongside Piksi?). If it is a dsungaripteroid, then dsungaripteroids are the unambiguously longest lived pterosaur clade known, adding an extra 30 million years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-28724416955218040752013-08-22T08:36:51.511-07:002013-08-22T08:36:51.511-07:00Thanks Mark. Always edifying.Thanks Mark. Always edifying.Tom Hopphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17683044597782252722noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-10231963471169523702013-08-21T13:08:42.069-07:002013-08-21T13:08:42.069-07:00I'm not sure I agree that this case is particu...I'm not sure I agree that this case is particularly subjective. The formulation of the two proposed 'families' (they weren't viewed as clades at the time, of course) is surely similar enough that, sidestepping the preoccupation issue of <i>Titanopteryx</i>, we had almost simultaneous competing labels for the clan we now know as azhdarchids. Even Padian himself said so in his 1986 paper, which was written specifically to address this issue. In his introduction, he states:<br /><br />"Shortly before my diagnosis of the new Family Titanopterygiidae was published (Padian, 1984), a paper by L. A. Nesov (1984) appeared in which he named a virtually identical taxon at the sub-familial level. This brief note is to emend the taxonomy and revise the diagnoses of the taxa involved."<br /><br />And in later elaboration:<br /><br />"Nesov (1984) named the Sub-family Azhdarchinae of the family Pteranodontidae on the basis of his new genus and species Azhdarcho lancicollis, from the Upper Turonian-Coniacian of the Uzbek SSR. Nesov's diagnosis leaves no doubt that the characters of the cervical vertebrae, on which I based my diagnosis of Titanopterygiidae, are identical, and therefore his name should take priority."<br /><br />Setting the confusion of the <i>Arambourgiania</i>/<i>Titanopteryx</i> to one side for the moment, my point is that Padian's proposed name for the azhdarchid group almost won out, at least temporarily. I don't think workers of that time were in any doubt that he and Nesov had identified the same basic group, and only one name would have stood. 'Azhdarchidae' would probably have been considered an acceptable replacement once the synonymy of <i>Titanopteryx</i> was discovered, of course.Mark Wittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-11972949902886101102013-08-21T11:22:02.766-07:002013-08-21T11:22:02.766-07:00This is irrelevant. Titanopterygidae follows Titan...This is irrelevant. Titanopterygidae follows Titanopteryx, which based on preoccupation is an insect. This means that <i>Titanopterygidae</i> is not merely incorrectly formed, it must be shifted as a "family" rank taxon for the insect clade. It doesn't compete for priority with <i>Azhdarchidae</i> under any circumstance because the two names do not have concordant contents. Moreover, only under assumptions that the species taxa <i>Azhdarcho</i> and <i>Arambourgiana</i>(<i>Titanopteryx</i>) were synonyms would the case that <i>Titanopterygidae</i> ever compete directly with <i>Azhdarchidae</i> (under the Principle of Coordination). But, because they also lack the same type species, the only type of synonymy that would be proposed would be the subjective kind, where people play games about whether <i>Thalassodromidae</i> should be in <i>Tapejaridae</i> if they were sister taxa (which I am not arguing for or against at this moment).Jaime Headdenhttp://qilong.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-32669516468324310542013-08-21T07:36:32.395-07:002013-08-21T07:36:32.395-07:00I think there's been some misunderstanding her...I think there's been some misunderstanding here. I wasn't referring to the replacement name for <i>Arambourgiania</i> (I'm very familiar with that story), but the naming of the azhdarchid clade itself. Nesov's publication specifying the content, name and diagnosis for the group beat Padian's similar work by a mere few months and, under ICZN Guidelines, had precedent. My point is that the group missed out on having a pretty horrible name by a relative whisker, not anything about the validity of <i>Titanopteryx</i> as the basis of a pterosaur clade name (which, of course, you're correct about).Mark Wittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-29443362249327227402013-08-21T07:27:45.212-07:002013-08-21T07:27:45.212-07:00If ghost lineages rather than stratigraphic occurr...If ghost lineages rather than stratigraphic occurrences are taken into account, nyctosaurs (members of Ornithocheiroidea according to some) may match azhdarchids, but only in some interpretations of pterodactyloid phylogeny. My preferred interpretation of the pterosaur tree (something more-or-less like the recent variants of the 'Unwin phylogeny') wouldn't show this. The longest lineage of ornithocheiroids - Ornithocheiridae itself - are probably the current runner up for the longest-lived pterosaur lineage, at 60 Ma. Mark Wittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02524696111911168322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-41903026516625453032013-08-21T07:16:37.166-07:002013-08-21T07:16:37.166-07:00Nesov's 'Azhdarchinae' pipped the far-...<i>Nesov's 'Azhdarchinae' pipped the far-less elegant Titanopterygidae to the publishing punch by a matter of months, and took nomenclatural priority for the group.</i><br /><br />That actually doesn't matter. The reason why <i>Arambourgiania</i> isn't called <i>Titanopteryx</i> anymore is that the name <i>T.</i> was preoccupied by an insect. Any family Titanopterygidae <b>must</b> be based on the valid name <i>T.</i>, not on its invalid junior homonym.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653345901774701895.post-21251459515146278412013-08-21T06:45:46.528-07:002013-08-21T06:45:46.528-07:00"[T]his gives the group a stratigraphic recor..."[T]his gives the group a stratigraphic record spanning the entire Cretaceous: 80 million years in total. This is longer than any other pterosaur group."<br /><br />But, given that they must have originated well after the ancestral pterodactyloid, wouldn't the other branch of Pterodactyloidea (Ornithocheiroidea, I think) be about as long, even if they snuffed it earlier?Mike Keeseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00147156174467903264noreply@blogger.com