Julius Csotonei
A group of researchers recently made an astonishing discovery.
Using an innovative imaging technique, an international team of scientists has discovered remarkable details of a pterosaur’s soft tissue. Despite an age of about 145-163 million years, the wing membrane and tissue between both feet managed to survive fossilization.
Armed with new data, the team used modeling to determine that this tiny pterosaur had the ability to launch itself from the water. Their findings are published in Scientific Reports.
Fine details
Pterosaurs – an extinct type of winged reptile – were the first known vertebrates to take to the skies and fly. Their dimensions ranged from very small (a wingspan of 25 centimeters) to absolutely huge (a breathtaking wingspan of 10 to 11 meters). According to the lead researcher of the new work, Dr. Michael Pittman, the tiny aurorazhdarchid studied could fit in the palm of your hand. Of 12 well-preserved pterosaurs from Germany’s Solnhofen Lagoon, it was the only one with preserved soft tissues.
dr. Pittman is a paleobiologist and assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and co-author Dr. Thomas G. Kaye is affiliated with the Foundation for Scientific Advancement. The authors noted that this pterosaur is now one of only six known pterosaurs with webbed tracks and about 30 with wing membranes.
“We are constantly amazed at how stunning the preserved details can be,” Dr. Pittman to Ars, “which just keeps getting better and better as we refine the technique.”
The ability to detect these soft tissues and bring them into sharp relief using laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) is relatively new. LSF is a non-destructive imaging technique developed by Dr. Pittman and Dr. Kaye has been taken to a new level.
“As part of a larger, ongoing project,” said Dr. Pittman, “We used LSF to reveal otherwise hidden soft tissues preserved in fossils. A major focus has been the use of LSF to study feathered dinosaurs and pterosaurs for their biology and flight evolution.”
Ready?
In this case, understanding the biology of the pterosaur involved determining whether this late Jurassic creature could ascend from the water. Just because the pterosaur had webbed feet, the researchers emphasized, doesn’t necessarily mean it spent time in the water, nor does it indicate that it could get out of the water if it happened to fall in.
The work was incredibly difficult and potentially controversial. It’s one thing to try to determine locomotion in animals with skeletons similar to today’s; it’s a very different matter if that creature doesn’t have a modern analog.
“There’s a lot of debate about pterosaurs in general, about pretty much every aspect of their biology,” Dr. Armita Manafzadeh to Ars. “And their joints are being discussed extra because they’re just really bizarre.”
dr. Manafzadeh, who was not involved in this research, is a Donnelley Postdoctoral Fellow and NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. Her work focuses on what has been called ‘arthrology’: understanding joints, joint function and movement in both extant and extinct species.
To figure out the movement of extinct animals, she said, one needs to determine “what you think the animal was capable of, and that has its own challenges.”
“But you also have to figure out, from this array of possibilities, what did the animal do? actually when it was alive,” she said. “It might have done it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it did.”
The team looked to Dr. Michael Habib, a self-described specialist in pterosaur aeromechanics and one of only four people on Earth with that expertise, to help them analyze how these soft tissues may have affected the reptile’s ability to fly and launch. dr. Habib has studied birds and pterosaurs for years and his unique knowledge of physics, aerodynamics and paleontology made his insights particularly relevant. The launch model used in this article was an extension of the work Dr. Habib and his colleague did in 2010 to help determine whether large pterosaurs would have been able to launch from the water. He is a research associate at the National History Museum of Los Angeles and an adjunct associate professor of medicine at UCLA.
“I’m working on animal biomechanics and the origin of flight,” said Dr. Pittman, “but I invited Dr. Mike Habib to the project because of his specific expertise in pterosaur flight, which allowed the team to deliver the results they found.”
