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| Pterodactyloid specimen with the impression of a throat pouch preserved |
The number of
pterosaur specimens now known from the Solnhofen is very impressive, certainly
in the hundreds, although with a good number sitting in private hands, plenty
of information is kinda known about, without necessarily being in the
literature. However, while it is easy to bemoan the inaccessibility of material
that isn’t in museums, far too much that is available is not always looked at,
and a great case in point is the collection of Solnhofen material in the
Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. In the early 1900s, the Carnegie was able to
acquire a large collection of fossils from a Belgian collector the Baron de
Bayet, and this included considerable amounts of Solnhofen fossils including a dozen
pterosaurs. This is arguably the best collection outside of Europe, or even
outside or Germany, and includes material in 3D, with soft tissues, stomach
contents and other rather nice details. However, in the following hundred years
a total of just 10 papers even mention these specimens, and some of these are
very much references in passing. The only even vaguely detailed mentions come
from Peter Wellnhofer’s works from the 1970s, which are not easy to access
these days, often available only with poor images, don’t illustrate all the
specimens, and came in many cases prior to additional preparation or other
modifications. In short, this is a major collection of pterosaurs which needs
to be revisited.
While visiting Mike
Habib in Pittsburgh, we were hunting for things to do and realised this was an
area ripe for reappraisal and set to revising and updating the material.
Joining forces with Carnegie curator Matt Lamanna, we have now published a long
paper (appropriately enough in the Annals of Carnegie Museum) detailing the
material and its history. Naturally we have not done detailed descriptions of
the anatomy of the pterosaurs at hand – there are very good descriptions
of things like Rhamphorhynchus and adding to that would
merely fill space without really conveying much useful information, so instead
we focused on what is unique about each specimen (taphonomy, condition of the
material, what is and isn’t present) and specific history of the material in
places. For completeness, we even briefly covered the casts in the collection,
and the skeletal models made by Wellnhofer when he was in the museum on a
sabbatical many years ago. This still resulted in a manuscript of over 15 000
words (despite there being only a handful of references) and 15 figures (at least
one of each specimen), while Mike rather heroically took dozens of measurements
for each specimen and then repeated the exercise for accuracy. The paper is in
black and white, but colour versions of the key figures are online here alongside the data.
Some of these
specimens turned out to be much more interesting and potentially important than
previously realised and we were also able to correct some previous problems and
update the taxonomy. Recent revisions especially to the pterodactyloids has
left a lot of collections lagging in their taxonomy, but there was also a large
animal that was listed as Rhamphorhynchus,
despite obviously being a pterodactyloid, and indeed actually doesn’t even bear
much resemblance to any currently known Solnhofen pterosaur and is rather
cryptic. Two specimens had been mistakenly thought to be a plate and
counterplate and had been combined even though they were quite different. After
much head scratching we realised the issue was that there was a plate and
counterplate there, but thanks to effectively a typo, the wrong pair had been
put together.
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| Rhamphorhynchus specimen prepared free of the matrix |
Two specimens of Rhamphorhynchus have undergone pretty
dramatic changes in recent years, having been fully prepared free of their
matrix. In one case, this results in a very odd flat specimen (which is
apparently now very fragile – I actually didn’t see either of these, they were
away when I was at the Carnegie) but that is at least cleaned up, but the other
is a near complete skull preserved in 3D. Many readers will remember the paper
on pterosaur neuroanatomy led by Larry Witmer that compared the brain
structures of Anhanguera and Rhamphorhynchus and this specimen was
responsible for the data on the latter. Three dimensional material from the
Solnhofen is not common, so a skull that is in 3D and prepared to the point
that it can be seen in all views is a real treasure and while it has been
scanned, we’ve included a series of large photos of it to help reveal the
structure.
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| Rhamphorhynchus skull in near 3D (if lacking teeth) prepared free of the matrix |
Several specimens show
traces of soft tissues including the wings, throat sacs and tail vanes. None
are especially well preserved, but nor ore these features that common either
(in part perhaps because like the leg feathers of Archaeopteryx, they may have been destroyed in the past to ‘better’
prepare specimens), so any additional information is useful. Finally, one of
them does appear to have some fish teeth associated with the stomach. We this
is has been missed before by other people and so is a novel find, and that
extends the set of Rhamphorhynchus
specimens with fish gut contents and firms up the evidence for piscivory as a
major part of the diet of these animals.
Hopefully therefore
this paper will clarify a few issues with the collection, bring forwards some
of the developments and details not previously seen or recognised and provides
a basis for future research. Also of course it marks the beginning of the sad
death of Matt Lamanna’s career as a researcher of dinosaurs and the slow and
painful descent into working on pterosaurs and consorting with the kinds of
people who actually quite like them. For this Mike and I can only apologise, or
cackle wildly with unabandonned joy, depending on who is reading at the time.
Hone,
D.W.E., Habib, M.B. & Lamanna, M.C. 2013. An annotated and illustrated
catalogue of Solnhofen (Upper Jurassic, Germany) pterosaur specimens at
Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Annals of Carnegie Museum, 82: 165-191.Link to PDF here.
