Beak bone reveals pterosaur like no other

Date:
October 14, 2020
Source:
University of Portsmouth
Summary:
A new species of small pterosaur - similar in size to a turkey -
has been discovered, which is unlike any other pterosaur seen
before due to its long slender toothless beak.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A new species of small pterosaur -- similar in size to a turkey -- has
been discovered, which is unlike any other pterosaur seen before due to
its long slender toothless beak.


==========================================================================
The fossilised piece of beak was a surprising find and was
initially assumed to be part of the fin spine of a fish, but a team of palaeontologists from the universities of Portsmouth and Bath spotted the unusual texture of the bone - - seen only in pterosaurs -- and realised
it was a piece of beak.

Professor David Martill of the University of Portsmouth, who co-authored
the study, said: "We've never seen anything like this little pterosaur
before. The bizarre shape of the beak was so unique, at first the
fossils weren't recognised as a pterosaur." Careful searching of the
late Cretaceous Kem Kem strata of Morocco, where this particular bone
was found, revealed additional fossils of the animal, which led to the
team concluding it was a new species with a long, skinny beak, like that
of a Kiwi.

Lead author of the project, University of Portsmouth PhD student Roy
Smith, said: "Just imagine how delighted I was, while on field work
in Morocco, to discover the lower jaw to match the upper jaw found by
Dr Longrich of this utterly unique fossil animal." The new species, Leptostomia begaaensis, used its beak to probe dirt and mud for hidden
prey, hunting like present-day sandpipers or kiwis to find worms,
crustaceans, and perhaps even small hard-shelled clams.



========================================================================== Pterosaurs are the less well-known cousins of dinosaurs. Over 100 species
of these winged-reptiles are known, some as large as a fighter jet and
others as small as a sparrow.

Professor Martill said: "The diets and hunting strategies of pterosaurs
were diverse -- they likely ate meat, fish and insects. The giant
500-pound pterosaurs probably ate whatever they wanted.

"Some species hunted food on the wing, others stalked their prey on
the ground.

Now, the fragments of this remarkable little pterosaur show a lifestyle previously unknown for pterosaurs." The scientists used a computerised tomography (CT) scan to reveal an incredible network of internal canals
for nerves that helped detect the prey underground.

Dr Nick Longrich, from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University
of Bath, said: "Leptostomia may actually have been a fairly common
pterosaur, but it's so strange -- people have probably been finding bits
of this beast for years, but we didn't know what they were until now."
Long, slender beaks evolved in many modern birds. Those most similar
to Leptostomia are probing birds -- like sandpipers, kiwis, curlews,
ibises and hoopoes. Some of these birds forage in earth for earthworms
while others forage along beaches and tidal flats, feeding on bristle
worms, fiddler crabs, and small clams.



========================================================================== Leptostomia could probably have done either, but its presence in the
Cretaceous age Kem Kem strata of Africa -- representing a rich ecosystem
of rivers and estuaries -- suggests it was drawn there to feed on
aquatic prey.

"You might think of the pterosaur as imitating the strategy used
successfully by modern birds, but it was the pterosaur that got there
first," said Dr Longrich. "Birds just reinvented what pterosaurs had
already done tens of millions of years earlier." Dr Longrich suggests
the new species shows how, more than a century after pterosaurs were
first discovered, there's still so much to learn about them. He said:
"We're underestimating pterosaur diversity because the fossil record
gives us a biased picture.

"Pterosaur fossils typically preserve in watery settings -- seas, lakes,
and lagoons -- because water carries sediments to bury bones. Pterosaurs
flying over water to hunt for fish tend to fall in and die, so they're
common as fossils. Pterosaurs hunting along the margins of the water will preserve more rarely, and many from inland habitats may never preserve
as fossils at all.

"There's a similar pattern in birds. If all we had of birds was their
fossils, we'd probably think that birds were mostly aquatic things
like penguins, puffins, ducks and albatrosses. Even though they're
a minority of the species, their fossil record is a lot better than
for land birds like hummingbirds, hawks, and ostriches." Over time,
more and more species of pterosaurs with diverse lifestyles have been discovered. That trend, the new pterosaur suggests, is likely to continue.

The paper was published today in Cretaceous Research.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Portsmouth. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Roy E. Smith, David M. Martill, Alexander Kao, Samir Zouhri,
Nicholas
Longrich. A long-billed, possible probe-feeding pterosaur
(Pterodactyloidea: ?Azhdarchoidea) from the mid-Cretaceous of
Morocco, North Africa. Cretaceous Research, 2020; 104643 DOI:
10.1016/ j.cretres.2020.104643 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201014201008.htm

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