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Qilong β Once Terrifying, Now Tame
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Published: 2012-11-29 20:25:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 1698; Favourites: 44; Downloads: 0
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Description
Provided for your enjoyment, please find enclosed1. Pterosaur bust, rendered in ink (Pigma Micron 01) representing the ornithocheiroid pterosaur Cearadactylus atrox.
2. Discussion of the affinities of Cearadactylus atrox:
This pterosaur has been confusedly placed among either ornithochierids or among ctenochasmatid pterosaurs, due to ideas about the complexity of its dentition, arrangement, an apparent rostral overbite, and so forth. Although so far informally published in an abstract by Alex Kellner and followed by Bruno Villa Nova's doctoral thesis, it was found that the rostra sections of the jaws were found separated from the rest of the skull. It is thought they represent much of the missing material of the original skull, and of the same specimen, but collectors "fixed" the jaws by making it look more crocodilian-like. New preparation and description indicates the two halves of the jaws were flipped, and correcting this while noting the incomplete teeth of the specimen (virtually all of the wicked front teeth were much more moderate in size), provides a much more normal looking ornithocheirid-esque animal. The descriptors gave the name "Cearadactylus" (CearΓ‘ wing, for the state of Brazil where it was "found" -- so say the collectors) the description "atrox" (cruel, savage or terrible, hence "atrocious") based on the teeth, but it takes a lot out of the animal when the jaws are correctly drawn.
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Comments: 17
OOOR ... "cracked cornified skin"-faced pterosaurs.
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I want more pterosaurs drawn by you. God, you make them gorgeous. By the way, gret thing the cheecks. Artistic choice or scientific one?
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Artistic. There is no bony feature on the jaw that implies it's presence. It was there to provide a bird-like facial feature that would be immediately noticeable, and perhaps detract from the long, needly pointy things at the front. It makes it look so much more like a bird, and even a living creature, that now thinking about doing this drawing without it seems irrational. I would say, though, that there is no particular reasoning for why it SHOULD have such a feature as far as I can tell: such a structure might inhibit wide-gape in the jaws, as it requires highly elastic tissues that might not be present, or not that elastic. It is there, though, also because I wanted to draw a pterosaur with an extended rictus.
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Well, it's a rictus.
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interesting scaled jaws. Can we expect a thing on pterosaur lips/beaks like we got with dinosaur pterosaur/beaks?
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Yes. This is proposed artistically, however. The jaws of some pterosaurs were likely substantially different, and it is possible that some pterosaurs had distinct "lip" like structures, but others would have been far more crocodilian: scaled oral margins, but no "lips", and closely-adhering cornified skin.
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Are bird-like beaks likely on any of them?
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That's a question I don't even have an inkling of an answer to when it comes to any pterosaur with teeth. With pterosaurs without teeth, it's plausible, but no trace of the "beak" has been found even in Liaoning/Ningcheng fossils, while there are suggestions that it was possible because of similar fossils from the Santana Formation (such as Tupandactylus imperator) or Solnhofen (with Rhamphorhynchus spp.). The thing is, analogues to beak presences have not been extensively studied in pterosaurs save the absence of teeth. We've all been pretty generous with the idea that they had a rhamphotheca, and that it would have had a basal/marginal softer tissue such as a "cere" as in birds (which resembles some of the crocodilian facial skin) but there hasn't been a true extensive study of the presence, form, or extent of such a thing in any pterosaur, merely whether a soft-tissue trace was there.
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Huh. So would a Pteranodon with a scaly snout (or a fuzzy one like a dog's) be out of the question?
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Well, to answer the question, we should try to find out if pterosaurs should have scales at all. I've drawn their feet that way, most people do, and these seem like typical "looks like a bird, do it like that" crap -- no one tries to really model them after lizards save maybe Sibbick. I'm honestly on the fence about scales in faces of pterosaurs more derived than, say, pterodactyloids. And even then, without any direct evidence in anurognathids which might have been "furry" from the snout tip to the tail and wingtip to wingtip, scales may just not be viable AT ALL. In many ways, the illustration is speculation. It's pretty, sure, but speculation.
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I can definitely see some pterosaurs as fuzzy from snout to tail like mammals. It's hard to imagine Pteranodon or Quetzalcoaltus with furry snouts though.
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That might be a circumstance of their being beaked: Our experience with beaked pterosaurs typically involves looking at birds, in which the entire rostrum is surrounded by a sheath, but we mustn't forget that turtles also exist and do not have "sheaths" for beaks, but instead exhibit an inner and outer "plate" that forms the rhamphotheca and converge into the tomial edge. This doesn't extend that far around cranial openings in the skull, unlike birds. I do wonder on whether some pterosaurs would have had limited, marginal beaks rather than full-head cased ones, or even intermediate between them as is typical of pterosaur art.
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I'm having trouble visualizing that. Something that looks like a beak only around the "lips?"
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Yes.
Note I am not saying it is how we should restore them, but that the grand majority of pterosaur reconstructors do not necessarily discriminate between marginal or facial-sheaths, simply adopt the latter ... because birds.
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Hm. Maybe a turtle-fur pterosaur face is in order...
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