Cataloging the Carnegie

 

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.

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.

 

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.

Pterosaur Aerodynamics at GWU

+Lorena Barba over at George Washington University had her students do some fun summaries of pterosaur aerodynamics at the end of the Fall Semester. She is a professor in engineering who runs a course on animal flight (she is also the CFD guru behind the latest analysis of gliding snakes with J. Socha). These topics followed from a discussion that Lorena and I had after some interesting (and amusing) trolling on my Google+ stream. We identified four topics for her students to look into more: pterosaur launch, pterosaur weight estimates, pterosaur wings and flight capabilities, and Wagner Effects. The students wrote blog posts, which can be found here:

http://lorenabarba.com/blog/student-guest-blog-post-pterosaur-quad-launch/

http://lorenabarba.com/blog/student-guest-blog-post-pterosaur-weight-estimation/

http://lorenabarba.com/blog/student-guest-blog-post-pterosaur-wings-and-flight-capabilities/

http://lorenabarba.com/blog/student-guest-blog-post-the-wagner-effect/

These students are all engineers, which adds a fun element because most were quite unfamiliar with pterosaur biology going into this project. There are some errors in the terminology and details of biology as a result, but it's quite good work, and brought some new things to light for me (especially the Wagner section). Enjoy!

Oh, and Happy New Year everyone...

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?...

...asked John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in November 1972, before most of the Pterosaur.net crew were even born.

This particular song is guaranteed to make me grind my teeth as I elbow my way through Aldi with a basket full of mince pies and a wet umbrella tucked under my arm. Yes, there's a bit of 'Bah Humbug' in me, I won't deny that, but that's not the whole reason. You will find other seasonal novelty songs on my iPod all year round, so why, I hear you ask, do I hate Happy Xmas (War is Over) with all my heart?

It's the opening lines really. So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.

Groan. As if we need to be reminded that another year has shot by, and we haven't done half of the things that we wanted to. It's like being told off by your parents for dossing around in your pyjamas all day, instead of doing something useful.

But we haven't been dossing around in our pyjamas in the NHMUK pterosaur collection, contrary to any stories that you might have heard. It's been a busy year, as usual. I'd like to tell you how many collection visitors have been this year, but I don't have access to the stats right now, as I'm writing from the debris-strewn dining table at the Steel / Hume residence. Instead, let's go through the diary, and see what the NHMUK pterosaurs got up to in 2013.

The snout of the 'cookie-cutter' pterosaur Istiodactylus was CT scanned for a PhD project. At this stage I have no further information on what, if anything, this showed. The same project was to include SEM work on a single tooth. Several researchers are interested in this specimen, so I'm sure that this data will be useful to someone. Sadly, the student has decided not to continue with this project, making this the second time that a PhD project on Istiodactylus has stalled (if you'll pardon the pun). Perhaps it was cursed by the collector, Hooley, all those years ago.

Speaking of collectors, Heather Middleton kindly loaned her collection of Kimmeridge Clay pterosaur bones and teeth so that they could be photographed by those lovely chaps in the NHMUK photo studio. Some of Heather's specimens might feature in the pterosaur chapter of the forthcoming field guide to the Kimmeridge Clay (available in all good bookshops), which is edited by none other than Dangerous Dave Martill. He is also solely responsible for the pterosaur chapter, I believe. Heather's collection is far superior to the NHMUK material, and includes quite a few nice teeth.

The latest Isle of Wight pterosaur, Vectidraco, was described and named early this year.  For those that missed it, the specimen is a small pelvis that was found by a young girl about two years ago, and donated to NHMUK by her. News reached the ears of 'The One Show', a popular tea-time television programme, and to cut a long story short, I had about 24 hours notice to prepare the specimen and myself for live TV on April 11th. The museum's Head of Conservation made a mount and a box so that the specimen could travel safely to the studio without being handled. Daisy, the girl who found the specimen, was there too, with her whole family, but was a bit overwhelmed by the whole live TV thing, and went all shy. I was too busy trying to hold my tummy in, and worrying that I would forget the name Vectidraco.

I didn't make it to the Pterosaur Symposium in Rio de Janeiro this year, as it wasn't as heavily subsidised as the one in Beijing in 2010. But several people were kind enough to send me copies of the abstracts volume. Much appreciated. I have a couple of spares, if anyone missed out.

One of the Solnhofen pterosaurs travelled to Southampton University for a session in their big CT scanner. Unfortunately this didn't go as well as hoped. The images showed bedding in the matrix, but no contrast between it and the bones. Later in the year, I was back at Southampton again for the Wealden symposium, which was very well-attended. Dave Martill spoke about Istiodactylus. And the Great Wall of China.

One of the last big events of the year was 'Blast From the Past' at Dinosaur Isle. This is an open day at the museum in Sandown, Isle of Wight, with local collectors, palaeontologists, archaeologists and artists all showing their work and collections to the many visitors. For me it was a chance to see old friends and hear about some recent finds. I was expecting to meet up with Nick Chase to pick up a couple of Pholidosaurus skulls that he'd collected in Dorset in the late 1980s, but to my surprise he also donated a few other specimens from the Island. These include a few bits of small pterosaurs, and a theropod humerus. I also saw Mick Green for the first time in ages, and he brought along most of his pterosaur collection.

Finally, a painted cast of Dimorphodon has been exchanged with AMNH (for some casts of Mongolian dinosaur bones) and a cast of the snout of Istiodactylus will probably be exchanged with Dinosaur Isle for a cast of their new small croc. 

That's not all, of course. I won't bore you with all the croc-collection comings and goings, as presumably you came here to read about pterosaurs. So I will stop here, put on my pyjamas and watch my new DVD that I got for Christmas. It's called 'Flying Monsters' and it should be really good, because Sir David Attenborough is in it, and it has a blood-stained Dimorphodon on the front cover...

Yes, it's from the Solnhofen. Really.

I'll just leave this here. Enjoy.

Ornithocheirids on show

Yes more photos from Frankfurt, this time of a combination display that has more or less everything. First off there's a superb mounted animal on the wing hanging from the ceiling. Then there is a cabinet containing a cast of a superb specimen on Anhanguera laid out in something I assume is close to the mid-point of preparation, and finally there is the whole prepared piece: the skull is separated and on show, and running up the side of the cabinet is the assembled wing.

 

 

Also there is a sectioned longbone, showing the wonderfully thin bone walls. This one is especially nice since it has, unusually, not been infilled with matrix making it really clear and the internal trebeculae are also quite clearly preserved (and apparently calcite crystal free).

It's quite a set and does show just how much information can be crammed into surprisingly little space and while I can't read the text of the main display it is clearly talking about burial, preservation, preparation and the reconstruction of the animal. Great stuff.

Quetzy flying high

 I've just returned from a very quick trip to Germany, dropping in at the Solnhofen Museum, Jura Museum Eichstaett and then onto Frankfurt in just 3 days. The primary purpose was actually looking at birds ad various feathered creatures but of course I took in more than a few pterosaurs too. There's a few more photos to come on that score including one extraordinarily important specimen that few will have seen and many will not even have heard of. In the meantime though, have a tanking great azhdarchid.

This one is beautifully mounted and is several meters off the ground in the main hall of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt and all but soars about the dinosaurs. Rather nicely one can stand almost right under it as well as seeing it from near eye-level from the higher balconies of the galleries above. Plenty of museums now have a cast / sculpt like this of a giant azhdarchid / Quetzalcoatlus, but this is a nice one (if imperfect) and while this may sound odd, it's nice that it is so high up in the rafters, it still looks big from ground level, but it gives a better sense of scale when you get to its level and discover that it is clearly even larger than it looked from below.

New pterosaurs, new phylogenies

People with an interest in pterosaurs will probably be aware of the recent passing of Wann Langston Jnr, the Texan palaoentologist who was responsible for a lot of the popularizing of Quetzalcoatlus. I was lucky enough to meet Wann at the 2007 Flugsaurier meeting in Munich where he was able to attend, despite being well into his 80s. Wann’s work covered a great many aspects of Mesozoic reptiles and the recent festschrift that has been published in his honour covers a raft of different taxa.

Of interest to us though are three papers on pterosaurs that between them name four new taxa! That’s quite an effort for a single volume that is not even devoted to pterosaurs. However, what I want to talk about here is the phylogeny that appears in the paper by Brian Andres and Time Myers. Many will know that since 2003 pterosaur phylognies can broadly be divided into two camps – those which look more like that of Dave Unwin’s 2003 paper (the one shown here in red and blue is from the Darwinopetus description) and those which resemble Alex Kellner’s effort from the same year (the one shown here is from the Wukongopterus description). They are not actually that different from each other, both have the same general arrangement of taxa but with some difference. Kellner-type phylognies have anurognathids before dimorphodonitds, Unwin the reverse. Unwin-types have ornithocheiroids before the ctenocasmatids, Kellner the reverse. Both have the rhamphorhynchines immediately before Darwinopterus and kin and those coming before the origin of pterodactyloids and both have dsungaripterids close to the azhdarchoids. In short, there’s a way to go to get a consensus and there are some fairly clear and consistent contradictions, but they are not so far apart.

 Interestingly, back in 2007, Brian Andres presented on some of his PhD work where he talked about how the two might be coming together, and Dave Unwin have a similar talk in Beijing in 2010. However, the phylogeny in this paper (below) is really rather different to both of those. This is the latest version of Brian’s analysis which has already popped up in a couple of papers, but frustratingly, the actual core of this (i.e. the actual character list and coding) still isn’t published –owing to the interminable delays on The Pterosauria book - so there’s no way at the moment to see what is causing these shifts.

The contrasts are quite dramatic though. Neither the dimorphodontids nor anurognathids are at the base (or close to it) of the phylogeny, but instead it is the eudimorphodontids and the anurognathids are in fact lying more derived than Darwinopterus and close to the pterodactyloids! The dsungaripterids are also now not sister taxon to the azhdarhoids, but lying within the clade as sister taxon to the thalassodromids and with the tapejarids as a basal clade to these plus the azhdarchids+chaoyangopterids.

In short, if anything, the phylogenies are getting further apart. Now I would expect them to converge again sooner or later: after all, there is only one correct solution. But as often lamented (and in particular by Darren), pterosaur phylogenies are generally rather character poor compared to many analyses of archosaur clades so there is much more to come. That said, I think some of the problem comes from the continued practice of doing analyses that cover the whole of the Pterosauria. Surely we are at the point where the rhamphorhynchoids and pterodactyloids are well separated and there’s no need to repeatedly include both in every analysis – it’s probably not helping the resolution of some trees where large chunks of the characters or states needed to help resolve one clade won’t add anything to the other. Devoting more time to better characters for smaller groups will probably be more productive than continuing to code up large numbers of taxa where large numbers of characters are inappropriate.

Anyway, that’s my 2p on the problem. Certainly the current conflicts are interesting and I look forwards to seeing what characters are supporting some of these unorthodox positions – there are likely to be some interesting convergences and codings in there. Obviously it’s hard to say much without the underlying data, but at face value I’m not overly convinced by some of those positions, but it will be especially interesting to see what these new positions mean for things like character support of branches and if it calibrates better temporally than the other current competing ideas. Now, we just need the book to get finished….

  

Andres, B. & Myers, T.S. 2013. Lone Star Pterosaurs. Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 103: Issue 3-4, p 383-398.