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Closest relatives found for pterosaurs, the first flying vertebrates

Dinosaur relatives called pterosaurs are the earliest known flying vertebrates. The branch of the evolutionary tree from which pterosaurs evolved has been unclear, but new fossil discoveries offer a solution to the mystery.
  1. Kevin Padian

    1. Kevin Padian is in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

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In 1812, Georges Cuvier, the incomparable anatomist at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, produced the first comprehensive book to be published on the history of fossil tetrapods (animals with backbones, excluding fishes)1. Cuvier surveyed all that was known of the palaeontology of these animals, exploring the wonders of their great variation and strange fossil forms. Some were clear relatives of familiar living animals; others were strange and difficult to classify. But none was quite as odd as a small, long-beaked, long-limbed creature from the Jurassic period (around 150 million years ago) that was excavated in Bavaria, Germany. Writing in Nature, Ezcurra et al.2 shed first light on the origin of this striking group.

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Nature 588, 400-401 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03420-z

References

  1. Cuvier, G. Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles des Quadrupèdes (Deterville, 1812).

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  2. Ezcurra, M. et al. Nature 588, 445–449 (2020).

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  3. Taquet, P. & Padian, K. C. R. Palevol 3, 157–175 (2004).

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  4. Cuvier, G. Ann. Mus. d’Hist. Nat. 13, 424–437 (1809).

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  5. Padian, K. Paleobiology 9, 218–239 (1983).

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  6. Paul, G. S. The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs (Princeton Univ. Press, in the press).

  7. Padian, K. in 3rd Symp. Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems: Short Papers (eds Reif, W.-E. & Westphal, F.) 163–168 (Attempto, 1984).

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  8. Gauthier, J. A. PhD thesis, Univ. California, Berkeley (1984).

  9. Padian, K. Zitteliana 28B, 21–28 (2008).

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  10. Padian, K. Nature 543, 494–495 (2017).

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