If you must procrastinate, procrastinate in pink

This October sees the fine fellows of Art Evolved hosting a rather unique palaeoart charity event for the Canadian Cancer Society. Coinciding with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, they're donating $1 to the CCS for every illustration of a pink dinosaur (and hopefully other prehistoric beasties) sent to their site. Because the moral backbone of Pterosaur.Net is strong enough to build a bridge with, we couldn't resist doing our bit by adding some membraney-goodness to said event. Alas, time is short and the best I could manage was mere colour tweaking on this Ornithocheirus/Criorhynchus (there's confusion over just what these animals are, but we don't have time to go into that now): hopefully others can do better.

Head over to Art Evolved to find details on how to submit your own flamboyantly coloured extinct saurian and, if you need inspiration to get some pink paint out of the cupboard, crank your speakers up and stick this on. Coincidentally, my choice of red neckgear today is entirely identical to that seen in this video. Not sure what that says about me, but there you go. Anyway, stop reading this and get pinking!

In which the Pterosaur.net blog gets seriously self involved

Ok so it's another re-post from my blog but one that is doubly relevant to pterosaurs. First of all, it contains pterosaur artwork of the highest quality and secondly, it's me interviewing John Conway about his art. So really it's kinda pterosaur.net squared. On an utterly unrelated note, but potentially of interest, if you are in anyway shape or form involved or interested in palaeontology then check out this years Palaeo Project Challenge over on Andy Farke's blog.

Right, onto the meat of the post.



These palaeoart interviews (see here for Luis Rey, Bob Nicholls, Brett Booth, Julia Molnar) have been very popular and I'm enjoying finding out how my friends and colleagues see their own work and that of others and with that, drumroll, it's the turn of John Conway. John has a big hand in Pterosaur.net and a generally huge web presence (most recently has seen the launch of his Ontograph Studios) when it comes to palaeo reconstructions but while he might have a lot of words and images online, until now he's not yet succumbed to the rigours of a Musings art interview. Take it away John (as ever, all art wrok is John's intellectual property):

On a wing membrane and an ankle attachment.

Regular pterophiles will realise that this is just a direct re-post from my own blog. However, the more dedicated pterosaur blog hound might not have seen this, so here's the post in all it's glory.

Proof, if it were needed, that the Pterosaur.net team do actually work on pterosaurs and not just blab endlessly about them comes from todays new paper featureing Ross Elgin, myself and Dino Frey. Once more, this is an odd time to talk about it since what has actually turned up are the uncorrected proofs, but it is out there and being read, so now is the time to talk about it. (You can download and read it here, and a very old post of mine here might be a good primer if you don't know your pterosaur wings too well).

Euparkeria be damned: it's ROFLopterosauria

I've tried to be good. No blogging for a bit while I catch up with work/job applications/dismantling the oven to clean it properly, but Ashley Fragomeni, aka Paleochick, has just gone and blown the whole thing. Her antics over at The Paleochick's Digs mean that, instead of finishing the Euparkeria skeletal reconstruction I need for my book, I'm now telling you about her ROFLopterosauria series, an collision of my pterosaur palaeoart and erudite observations into pterosaur palaeobiology. The latest one was just too funny to ignore, so here we are. On the internet. Blogging. Now my book won't be finished on time, I won't get paid, I won't make the rent and I'll be forced to sell my kidneys (both of them) and other parts of my body to make ends meet. Thanks a lot, Dusty.

We're promised a new bit of ROFLopterosauria every day or so for the next few days, so be sure to head back to the Paleochick's Digs over the next week to see more. The image above has nothing to do with anything you've just read, but shows Peter Wellnhofer's Rhamphorhynchus mobile on display in the Palaeontology Museum, Munich. We can't, after all, have a dull-looking blog post, can we?

Gorgonophilia, Star Trek and how they relate to giant pterosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous

I was very happy to find that my airline had provided me with my own little TV screen and a selection of movies for my flight back from Flugsaurier 2010. With eight hours to kill, this was welcome news and, as soon as we were away and provided with those annoying little earbud headphones that never really fit your ears properly, I was off to Movieland. First up: the remake of Clash of the Titans, a flick that I’d not heard great things about but promised nice visuals, minimal cerebral action and plenty of nice CG creatures. The reviews I’d read were spot on: clichéd characters, dialogue so wooden it could serve as a useful boat oar and numerous clumsy attempts to cash in on the 3D bandwagon kicked off by Avatar. Still, it did feature a nicely rendered Pegasus, giant scorpion caravans and Medusa, a snake-woman hybrid that I found worryingly attractive. Most concerning is that it wasn’t just the top half that made for the most pleasant viewing (which would be understandable, given that her appearance was based on model Natalia Vodianova): there’s clearly a part of my psyche, unrecognised until a week or so ago, that really digs the thought of scantily-clad snakewomen sliding and coiling around their room and constricting visitors to their chambers. Imagine how touchy-feely that would be: you’d not mind having a late breakfast with that. Man, that' d be a night to remember. Just think of the... oh… wait a second. Oh yeah: pterosaurs. Blog post. Decency. No mythophilic filth. Got it.

Next up: last year's Star Trek reboot. Now, I’ve never seen eye-to-eye with Star Trek. I was once a massive fan of Star Wars, but Trek? No. Just couldn’t get into it. Lots of talking; uniforms that looked a bit like the pyjamas I used to wear; big, lumbering spaceships that fire weedy looking weapons; aliens that look just like people with pies glued to their foreheads and, most importantly, a distinct lack of Han Solo. Bottom line: I just found it a bit dull so, when I heard the whole thing was being rebooted I wasn’t terribly excited by the idea. Still, the reviews were pretty good so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I did, after all, have several hours of flight time to kill.

You know what? It was great. It was exciting. It had proper aliens and gripping, tense action scenes. It had Simon Pegg. It wasn’t clean cut: there was even a bit of proper, honest-to-goodness swearing. I was totally surprised and, while I’m unlikely to change my opinion on the other entries in the franchise, I’ll certainly give the 2012 Trek sequel a spin. I may even pay to see it at the cinema. You know: with my own money and everything.

And the new Star Trek is just like pterosaur specimen n. 12701a of the Ligabue collection


Seriously. For the uninitiated, n. 12701a is a tiny distal fragment of a pterosaur wing phalanx one from the Santana Formation of Brazil (described by Dalla Vecchia and Ligabue 1993; n. 12701a shown in adjacent line drawing). When I say fragment, I’m not kidding: it’s really is one of the most unremarkable, dull and uninteresting scraps of pterosaur fossil ever published on and, like the old Star Trek, it’s the sort of thing that we should only really be bothered about when there’s no reruns of The Simpsons on the telly. In fact, probably the only thing stopping n. 12701a from being totally forgotten about is its size: for a distal fragment of a wing phalanx, it’s huge. At 75 mm across, Dalla Vecchia and Ligabue reconstructed the length of the complete phalanx as 850 mm (based on ornithiocheiroids such as Pteranodon and Santanadactylus), a dimension almost twice the size of comparable elements from 4 -5 m span ornithocheirids. Using complete ornithocheirid wings as a guide, the authors then went on to suggest that tiny-little-fragment n. 12701a represents an animal with a whopping 8 – 9 m wingspan.

Now, in a world where the largest pterosaurs span something like 10 m, the predicted wingspan of n. 12701 isn’t really a big deal. What is, however, is its age: aside from this and some other problematic remains from Britain*, there are no accounts of giant pterosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous. Hence, n. 12701 suggests that sizes pretty-near comparable with the largest pterosaurs of all were achieved tens of millions of years before Pteranodon and the giant azhdarchids turn up. All of a sudden, then, that chunk of pterosaur is starting to look far less pre-2009 Star Trek-esque and far more akin to the 2009 reboot: it's exciting, interesting and, being the lone wolf for giant pterosaurs of this time, a touch edgy. Indeed, people have probably been getting excited about n. 12701a for some time: I wouldn’t be surprised if it influenced the decision to portray Ornithocheirus with a 10 m span in Walking with Dinosaurs, for instance (see image at the top of the post, from here).

*There is one additional claim for giant pterosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous based on very, very scrappy material from the Isle of Wight, UK (Martill et al. 1996). We don’t have time to go into the details here, but there’s good reason to think that these remains were not from giant animals. The rationale for this has been written up by myself, Dave Martill and Steve Sweetman and should be published next year.

Alas, n. 12701a may not be quite as New Trek as we all thought. To be honest, I’ve never been fully convinced that it demonstrated giant pterosaurs were present in the Lower Cretaceous: it’s just so scrappy that drawing any conclusions about its overall size seems extremely spurious. A little bit of further investigation reveals why this gut feeling may be right.

That was then: this is now
To begin with, there no way that n. 12701a can be allocated to any pterosaur group: it’s just too scrappy and undiagnostic (Dalla Vecchia and Ligabue stated this themselves, but it bears reiterating here because it will prove important later). It is probably sensible to suspect it represents a group known from the Santana Formation, meaning it could either represent an ornithocheirid or an azhdarchoid. Now, in 1993, the Santana Formation was mainly known for its ornithocheirids (e.g. Unwin 1988) and azhdarchoids were relatively new kids on the block (Kellner and Campos 1988; Kellner 1989). Since then, however, we’ve found much more azhdarchoid material including up to three new species (Kellner and Campos 1994, 2002; Witton 2009), complete skeletons (Kellner and Hasagawa 1993) and buckets of incomplete specimens that are sitting in museum stores. This suggests that azhdarchoids were a far more speciose and abundant component of the Santana Formation pterosaur assemblage than could be predicted in the early ‘90s, then, and this is means that we need to strongly consider that n. 12701a may have azhdarchoid affinities.


This is potentially quite a big deal because azhdarchoids and ornithocheirids have very different wing constructions (see diagram of pterodactyloid wing configurations, above. The top image shows the ornithocheirid wingplan; middle image, the azhdarchid wingplan; bottom, tapejarid wingplan. From Witton [2007]). The wing phalanges of ornithocheirids are far more proportionate along the length of the wing finger, decreasing in size distally but only by comparatively small measures (e.g. Wellnhofer 1985). Azhdarchoids, by contrast, have massive first phalanges in their wing fingers (occupying over 40 per cent of the total finger length) but then drastically reduced second, third and fourth elements (Unwin 2003; Kellner 2003). What’s more, the diameters of the distal wing phalanges decrease in size dramatically across the azhdarchoid wing: that of the first is proportionally enormous compared to the rest. What this is leading up to, then, is that an azhdarchoid could have a massive first wing phalanx like that represented by n. 12701a without being a pterosaur giant. In fact, scaling an azhdarchoid wing using the 850 mm-long first phalanx length predicted by Dalla Vecchia and Ligabue gives a single wing length of just 3 m, and, therefore, a total wingspan of 6 m. That’s big, sure, but hardly gigantic for a pterosaur. Plus, this estimate supposes that the 850 mm length reconstuction of n 12701a is appropriate: would the same estimate be generated if it were based on a non-ornithocheirid pterosaur?


The plot thickens further when we consider that large azhdarchoids are already known from the same locality as n. 12701a. The Santana Formation thalassodromid Thalassodromeus, in particular, is a huge animal with a jaw approaching a metre in length (see image, above, of the author posing in a most embarrassing fashion with a full-size Thalassodromeus bust). Estimating the wingspan for this animal is difficult as no postcranial material is known, but its skull proportions suggest a 5 m span (Kellner and Campos 2002). Given how little data we have regarding the proportions between neoazhdarchian skulls and wingspans, it may not be entirely crazy to suppose a 6 m wingspan, either. Along with everything else, then, there are pterosaurs in the Santana Formation that would be a good size match for n. 12701a if it were, indeed, an azhdarchoid.

So, Lower Cretaceous giant pterosaurs, then?
None of this delivers a death-blow to the idea of giant pterosaurs existing in the Lower Cretaceous of course, but it certainly suggests that there is an equally, if not more, parsimonious interpretation of n. 12701a than it being the sole remnant of a giant ornithocheirid species. If nothing else, ornithocheirids are among the best represented of all pterosaurs and, in our extensive sampling of them, there’s no other evidence for such enormous animals (at least, none that I’m aware of). Considering n. 12701a as an azhdarchoid is a far more believable interpretation: it scales to a wingspan that we know azhdarchoids achieved, we would expect its overly large proportions in an azhdarchoid wing and, indeed, there are even comparably sized azhdarchoids in the same deposit. As such, while I’m not going to rule out the evolution of giant pterosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous entirely, I think we need far more evidence that we currently have to consider their existence likely.

And that, folks, is it for now. It’s Saturday night, so I’ll take my tale of how n. 12701a went from being boring to being really exciting and then boring again to the pub. Hey, you never know: there may be some women down there that, from the waist down, resemble rattlesnakes. You never know. I need to get ready. Clean, ironed shirt? Check. Wallet, house keys and phone? Check. Reflective shield and anti-venom? Check. Right, toodles.

References

• Dalla Vecchia, F. M. and Ligabue, G. 1993. On the presence of a giant pterosaur in the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian) of Chapada fo Arariple (northeastern Brazil). Bollettino della Scoietá Paleontologica Italiana, 32, 131-136.
• Kellner, A. W. A. 1989. A new edentate pterosaur of the Lower Cretaceous of the Araripe Basin, Northeast Brazil. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 61, 439-446.
• Kellner, A. W. A. 2003. Pterosaur phylogeny and comments on the evolutionary history of the group. In: Buffetaut, E. and Mazin, J. M. (eds.) Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs, Geological Society Special Publication, 217, 105-137.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Campos, D. A. 1988. Sobre um novo pterossauro com crista sagital da Bracia do Araripe, Cretáceo Inferior do Nordeste do Brasil. Anais da Academia Brasileira, Ciências, 60, 459-469.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Campos, D. A. 1994. A new species of Tupuxuara (Pterosauria, Tapejaridae) from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil. Anais da Academia Brasileira, Ciências, 66, 467–473.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Campos, D. A. 2002. The function of the cranial crest and jaws of a unique pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil. Science, 297, 389-392.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Hasagawa, Y. 1993. Postcranial skeleton of Tupuxuara (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea, Tapejaridae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 13, 44A.
• Martill, D. M., Frey, E., Green, M. and Green, M. E. 1996. Giant pterosaurs from the Lower Cretaceous of the Isle of Wight, UK. Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie, Monatshefte, 1996, 672-683.
• Unwin, D. 1988. New pterosaurs from Brazil. Nature, 332, 398-399.
• Unwin, D. M. 2003. On the phylogeny and evolutionary history of pterosaurs. In: Buffetaut, E. and Mazin, J. M. (eds.) Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs, Geological Society Special Publication, 217, 139-190.
• Wellnhofer, P. 1985. Neue pterosaurier aus der Santana-Formation (Apt) der Chapada do Araripe, Brasilien. Palaeontographica. Abteilung A, 187, 105-182.
• Witton, M. P. 2007. Titans of the skies: azhdarchid pterosaurs. Geology Today, 23, 33-38.
• Witton, M. P. 2009. A new species of Tupuxuara (Thalassodromidae, Azhdarchoidea) from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Formation of Brazil, with a note on the nomenclature of Thalassodromidae. Cretaceous Research, 30, 1293-1300.

Big news at Flickr

Dead quick post this one. In fact, it's simply instruction to point your browser here. There's not only some interesting pterosaury information on offer, but also a big announcement. Well, big for me, anyway.

The adjacent Pteranodon image, by the way, has nothing to do with anything mentioned here or there: he's just jazzing up the post a bit.

The unexpected, dreaded link between Flugsaurier 2010 and linen blazers

By jingo, I’ve just realised I’m worryingly close to being a yuppie. All the signs are there: I’m sitting in Costa coffee in Portsmouth’s Gunwharf Quays, a trendy waterfront complex of designer stores and chain restaurants. There’s an enormous cappuccino steaming away alongside my laptop, an iPod pouring music into my ears and I’ve inadvertently dressed entirely in designer clothes. Crap: I’ve even got a linen blazer draped over the chair opposite. I’m a haircut and an IKEA catalogue away from a leading role in a J. J. Abrams production. When did this happen? What happened to the slightly-alternative left-liberal arty type that I used to be? When did I suddenly become so… so… faux professional? Terms like ‘incentivise’ and ‘core competencies’ could now pass my lips and no-one would bat an eyelid. I feel so… middle management.

Best get to the bottom of this while I finish this mighty caffeinated beverage. If I can identify when this young professionalism started creeping up on me, I may be able to do something about it. It certainly wasn’t last night. No, that wasn’t very professional behaviour at all. It wasn’t my holiday in China: it’s hard to look professional when climate and hiking conspire to make you sweat more than an excited, overweight trekkie at his first Star Trek convention. But wait: just before that, there was the 2010 Flugsaurier International Symposium on Pterosaurs, held in Beijing at the start of August. Hmm… dozens of pterosaur experts from all over the world presenting their latest research, specimen viewings, museum visits and field excursions to fossiliferous outcrops of the Jehol Group? Attending that would give any wannabe pterosaur researcher delusions of professionalism: that must be it. Let’s investigate further.

Shiny new things


Flugsaurier 2010 (the particularly handsome, well-designed logo of which greeted you at the start of the post) featured talks and posters from dozens of pterosaur experts on virtually every research avenue of our leathery-winged chums. The talks were excellent and, it must be said, there was a surprising sense of intellectual cohesion. Pterosaur researchers are renowned for holding quite polar views on numerous topics but, at Flugsaurier 2010, there was a good sense that we’re starting to sing from similar song sheets. We don’t have time to mention every talk and poster of the conference (39 abstracts were submitted in total), but notable highlights included conference organiser Lü Junchang’s overview of Chinese pterosaurs, a talk that served to remind us how much China has contributed to pterosaur research since the discovery of the first Chinese pterosaur material in 1935. Fellow Pterosaur.Net host Dave Hone presented a new specimen of the anurognathid Dendorhynchoides that – get this – has a relatively long tail. The length of the tail in this animal has been controversial since its description (Ji and Ji 1998; drawing of the holotype, above, from this publication) thanks to some fabrication in the caudal region by its discoverers (Unwin et al. 2000). However, it turns out that the relatively long tail of the holotype was only partially restored and Dendorhynchoides did, indeed, have a longish tail. Dave continued to point out that there’s a wealth of phylogenetic potential in tail length: we just have to figure out a way to code it in a meaningful way. (You can see Dave’s comments on the meeting, incidentally, at this post at the Musings)

Further new discoveries were presented by Fabio Dalla Vecchia with a new, as yet unnamed, Triassic pterosaur from northern Italy. The affinities of this animal aren’t yet clear, though it appears to have some Raeticodactylus-like features. My fellow University of Portsmouth pterosaur worker, PhD student Steve Vidovic, presented his work on pterosaur tooth microstructure and revealed an unusual tooth tissue, neither dentine, cementum or enamel, comprising much of the external surface of pterosaur teeth. A movement is underway amongst certain pterosaur workers to christen this the ‘Vidovic Layer’ in a special avant-garde dancing and fireworks ceremony: please drop us a line if you’ve chorus line or pyrotechnics experience.

Helmut ‘UV wizard’ Tischlinger once again dazzled audiences with a display of new Solnhofen pterosaur specimens that, under UV light, were seen to have ridiculously-proportioned headcrests and hitherto unseen details of wing membrane histology. Worryingly for pterosaur palaeoartists, the size of pterosaur headcrests seems to be increasingly difficult to predict based on skull osteology alone and we may be painting virtually all our pterosaurs with vastly undersize headgear. Sticking with Solnhofen-esque pterosaurs, it was personally gratifying to see Chris Bennett’s poster on the taxonomy of Cycnorhamphus state that the Painten Pelican, a strange, isolated skull from Solnhofen deposits, should be referred to Cycnorhamphus as predicted on these very pages. Chris went on further to suggest that there is only one valid species of Cycnorhamphus, C. suevicus.

Dirty fakes and dissolving trees


Perhaps the most dramatic taxonomic revelation, though, came with the presentation of further preparation work on Cearadactylus atrox (line drawing of the holotype, above, from Unwin 2002), a mostly-complete skull from the Brazilian Santana Formation with unusual dentition and jaw structure (Leonardii and Borgomanero 1983, 1985). Previous views of the partially prepared specimen showed a very ornithocheirid-like cranial region but bizarre, stepped jaw tips with large, somewhat procumbent fangs. Cearadactylus has been classically difficult to place and has been housed amongst ornithiocheiroids (e.g. Dalla Vecchia 1993; Kellner and Tomida 2000) and ctenochasmatoids (Unwin 2002). With additional prep, however, Juliana Sayão was able to reveal that an ornithocheirid affinity was correct and, moreover, all the unusual features of the jaw tip are faked. The stepped nature of the jaw tips arose from the anterior skull and mandible having been broken off and reattached upside-down, while the large fangs were fabricated by imaginative fossil collectors or dealers. Actually, fossil fakery was something of a running theme in the conference: along with the doctored Dendorhynchoides discussed above, several faked pterosaur fossils were seen on display in the museum in Chaoyang Bird Fossil National Geopark and, in the privacy of Dave Hone’s office, we were shown a fantastic complete azhdarchoid-like pterosaur with an entirely fabricated head. The Cearadactylus fiasco is yet another demonstration that distinguishing genuinely unusual vertebrate fossils from those elaborated by dealers can be difficult. In my limited experience of dealing with such things, I reckon we have a good idea of what to expect in most fossil vertebrates so, if a feature looks totally, totally out-of-keeping with everything else we’ve ever seen, there’s the strong possibility that it’s been ‘improved’. Full preparation and investigation with things like UV light are probably the best way to detect potential fakeries but, even then, well-done fabrication can be difficult to detect.

In other talks, the phylogenetic influence of Darwinopterus was discussed by Dave Unwin. Dave plugged everyone’s favourite transitional pterosaur into two of the latest Big Pterosaur Phylogenies – that of Alex Kellner and his own - to see how it would affect tree topology. While Unwin’s own tree remained almost entirely consistent with previous incarnations, Alex’s didn’t fare quite so well and even well-supported groups like Pterodactyloidea collapsed into a polytomy with basal forms. Alex was, unfortunately, unavailable for comment due to being called back to Brazil early in the conference. Further cladistic acrobatics were performed by Chris Bennett with a test for homoplasy amongst predicted pterosaur relatives. Chirs found that characters of the hindlimb associated with cursoriality were likely to have developed convergently with other archosaurs, casting further mist over pterosaur origins.

Play that funky morphy, white boy
Pterosaur functional morphology was discussed at great length in several talks, and flight seemed to be on the topic of the moment. Colin Palmer told us of his physical and digital modelling of pterosaur wing sections and the aerodynamic effects felt across the wing. Mike Habib and I delivered back-to-back talks regarding the flight of giant pterosaurs: following several claims that large pterosaurs may have been flightless (Sato et al. 2009; Henderson 2010), we outlined several flaws in these predictions and that there’s actually very compelling evidence that even the largest pterosaurs could fly. Mike went on to say that, when they did, things like giant azhdarchids went like dynamite: in short, these were animals that could happily continent hop without working up a sweat. Mike and I have a paper accepted for publication on this that should see the light of day soon (at least, it will when I stop writing blog posts and get on with addressing our referee’s comments).


Mike returned to the stage to present his work with Jim Cunningham on water-launching pterosaurs. Pterosaur.Net readers will no-doubt be familiar with the concept of pterosaurian quadrupedal launches by now (see image, above, of Pteranodon mid-launch) and, by gum, it seems to work on water, too. I will say no more because a Mike and Jim have a paper on water launches in the works and, frankly, it’s so cool that I don’t want to steal any more of their thunder than I’ve already stolen. There will be some exceptional pictures being drawn of this stuff, though: hopefully Mike and Jim will get their work out soon.

Odds and ends
Two odds-and-sods presentations were also given: I presented new observations on giant azhdarchid remains that suggest they weren’t as big as we all thought and, changing key slightly half-way through my talk, then went on to discuss Quetzagate, or whatever you want to call the political and taxonomic debacle surrounding Quetzalcoatlus northropi (which, of course, you know all about because you’ve read this). Interestingly, this story was not as well known as I perceived it to be and, frankly, I’m wondering if it may warrant a more formal write up.


A less scandalous topic was covered by John Conway in the closing presentation where John discussed why pterosaur palaeoart – sorry – palaeontography – would benefit from a far more scientific approach. He’s dead right: pterosaurs are frequently portrayed with entirely incorrect proportions, muscle construction and unlikely colour schemes. Unfortunately, I’m amongst the guilty on this but I agree entirely with John: while we will remain shooting in the dark on most issues when reconstructing the life appearance of extinct animals, there are definitely some parts we can be ‘correct’ about (such as size and proportions) and others where we can at least aim for a likely ballpark (colour, behaviour). You can see the Anhanguera artwork that John used as his case study above, and further discussion of these points will feature, at some point, in these halls.

Once we all stopped yammering on


As with Munich before it, a portion of the conference was dedicated to specimen viewing. The new scaphognathine Fenhuangopterus, material referred to Darwinopterus, the chaoyangopterid Shenzhoupterus and a cast of the most complete and articulated large pterosaur I’ve ever seen - Zhenyuanopterus (above, with Dave Hone's cranium for scale) – were on offer. Poster displays took place in the same room but, in a silly move, I got too excited with Shenzhoupterus and didn’t get a proper look at them all. D’oh.

Field trips to outcrops of the Tiaojishan, Juifotang and Yixian Formations followed our time in Beijing, along with visits to several museums with extensive collections of Jehol material. As usual, dinosaurs were given pride of place in these institutions but, happily, other aspects of the Jehol biota were also given plenty of breathing space too.


Steve Vidovic and myself also made trips to the IVPP and Beijing Museum of Natural History: whilst the specimens were nice (and the fossil mammals were pretty incredible), both museums were let down by their woeful, woeful models of prehistoric beasties (image, above, of Beijing MNH Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. No, this isn't a joke). Whilst these were kept to a minimum in the IVPP, the Beijing MNHM has dedicated room after room to these travesties and, walking through them, they gave off no sense of wonder or scientific credibility: they were, frankly, a waste of space and money. To a certain extent, the same could be said of the wobbly animatronic dinosaurs littering the Chaoyang Bird Fossil National Geopark, models that are already showing drastic wear and tear after only a few years of operation. They all reminded me of comments made by Matt Wedel years ago concerning museums trying to be theme parks: gee-whizz displays and wobbly mechanised dinosaurs often only cheapen what could be a far more educational and interesting experience if museum developers only trusted public intellect a little more. After all, museum goers are intelligent enough to be interested in museum collections for what they are, not just because it’s associated with a squeaky Tyrannosaurus model that slowly moves it’s head from side-to-side and plays noises recorded from Jurassic Park. This is, of course, a whole issue in itself that I won’t elaborate on any further here, but museum directors take note: give your punters some credit!

And that was that
So, yes, that was Flugsaurier 2010. There are, of course, loads more things I could talk about and apologies to those who contributed and didn’t get a mention here. Thanks to the conference organisers, and particularly Lü Junchang, for putting the whole show together and keeping things running smoothly. Additional thanks go to all my friends and colleagues who made the experience such an enjoyable one, even if you did leave me with an inflated sense of professionalism. Now, with that coffee being long-finished (I’ve got the jittery hands of a high-end caffeine achiever to prove it) and designer threads suffocating my anti-commercialist, liberal attitudes, I must away to cleanse myself of yuppiedom before it's too late. If I'm not careful, I may become respectable. Holy Christmas: I may even grow up. Quick: where’s that linen jacket? I've got a date with that garment and some matches.

UPDATE: 29/08/10
Silly me: I forgot to mention that the conference abstracts are available for viewing here. Navigating your way around them, however, isn't terribly easy unless you can read Chinese. One final thing: Dave Hone had the adjacent image taken of Pterosaur.Net contributors in front of a very, very distant stretch of the Great Wall and, to put some faces to names, I thought I'd post it here. Plus, spreading our desperately handsome features as far as possible is basically a public service and bound to improve the moods of most people, so enjoy. (From left to right: John Conway, your host, Dave Hone, Mike Habib and Helmut Tischlinger)


References

• Dalla Vecchia, F. M. 1993. Cearadactylus? ligabuei nov. sp., a new early Cretaceous (Aptian) pterosaur from Chapada do Araripe (Northeatern Brazil). Bollettino della Societá Paleontologica Italiana, 32, 401-409.
• Henderson, D. M. 2010. Pterosaur body mass estimates from three-dimensional mathematical slicing. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30, 768-785.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Tomida., Y. 2000. Description of a new species of Anhangueridae (Pterodactyloidea) with comments on the pterosaur fauna from the Santana Formation (Aptian -Albian), Northeastern Brazil. National Science Museum, Tokyo, Monographs, 17, 1-135.
• Ji, S. A. and Ji, Q. 1998. A new fossil pterosaur (Rhamphorhynchoidea) from Liaoning. Jiangsu Geology; 22, 199-206.
• Leonardi, G. and Borgomanero, G. 1983. Cearadactylus atrox, nov. gen. nov. sp.; novo Pterosauria (Pterodactyloidea) da Chapada do Araripe, Ceará, Brasil. Congresso Brasileiro de Paleontologia, resumos, 17.
• Leonardi, G. and Borgomanero, G. 1985. Cearadactylus atrox, nov. gen. nov. sp.; novo Pterosauria (Pterodactyloidea) da Chapada do Araripe, Ceará, Brasil. Coletânea de Trabalhos Paleontológicos, Série Geologica, Brasilia, 75-80.
• Sato, K., Sakamoto, K., Watanuki, Y., Takahashi, A., Katsumata, N., Bost, C., and Weimerskirch, H. 2009. Scaling of soaring seabirds and implications for flight abilities of giant pterosaurs. PLoS ONE, 4, e5400.
• Unwin, D. M. 2002. On the systematic relationships of Cearadactylus atrox, an enigmatic Early Cretaceous pterosaur from the Santana Formation of Brazil. Mitteilungen Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Geowissenschaftlichen, 5, 239-263.
• Unwin, D. M., Lü, J. and Bakhurina, N. N. 2000. On the systematic and stratigraphic significance of pterosaurs from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation (Jehol Group) of Liaoning, China. Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe, 3, 181-206.