“Ian”
By Joschua Knüppe, retrieved from http://www.pteros.com/, a website dedicated to education about Pterosaurs.
A reminder that we will not be able to do every pterosaur until we reach $240 in donations on our patreon, so please donate even a dollar if you can.
Name: Ian
Name Meaning: N/A
First Mentioned: 2016
Mentioned By: Cheng et al.
Classification: Avemetatarsalia, Ornithodira, Pterosauromorpha, Pterosauria, Macronychoptera, Novialoidea, Breviquartossa, Pterodactylomorpha, Monofenestrata, Darwinoptera, Wukongopteridae
“Ian” is an as-yet unnamed Wukognopterid from the Tiaojishan Formation of Liaoning, China, living in the Oxfordian age of the Late Jurassic, about 153 million years ago. It is preserved in three dimensions with a nearly complete skull and various portions of the skeletons. It, like other Wukongopterids, showed a mixture of traits of more derived and more basal pterosaurs; and it also had a very long skull, with a crest on the end of its snout that is unique from other Wukongopterids, which probably helped it be distinct as a species from other Wukongopterids in the area. It cannot be confidently recovered as separate from the other Wukongopterids, however, so it still hasn’t been officially named as a new genus. It was a sexually mature animal, though not fully grown, and the crest is different than other individuals in the formation at its ontogenetic stage.
Sources:
Cheng, X., S. Jiang, X. Wang, and A. W. A. Kellner. 2016. New information on the Wukongopteridae (Pterosauria) revealed by a new specimen from the Jurassic of China. PeerJ 4:e2177; DOI 10.771/peerj.2177
Kellner, A. W. A. 2015. Comments on Triassic Pterosaurs with discussion about ontogeny and description of new taxa. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências 87(2): 669-689.
http://www.pteros.com/pterosaurs/ian-the-wukongopterid.html
Shout out goes to @fadedpuns!
This is your friendly reminder that ADAD relies on reblogs up and until @staff gets it’s shit together. Please reblog this post.