Discover Top Posts Tagged with #gliding lizard

Sulawesi Lined Gliding Lizard (Draco spilonotus), male, family Agamidae, Sulawesi, Indonesia

photograph by Tommy Hui https://www.instagram.com/tommys_wildlife_log/

#gliding dragon #gliding lizard #draco #agamidae #lizard #reptile #herpetology #animals #nature #asia

Sulawesi Lined Gliding Lizard (Draco spilonotus), male, family Agamidae, Sulawesi, Indonesia

photograph by A.S.Kono

#flying lizard #gliding lizard #draco #lizard #agamidae #reptile #herpetology #asia #animals #nature

What do you think about Coelurosauravus? I think it's neat how, out of all the gliding "winged lizard" reptiles that have evolved, that clade is seemingly the only one that made the membrane struts out of novel osteoderm structures instead of the ribcage. <researchgate. net/ publication/ 235237223_Gliding_Mechanism_in_the_Late_Permian_Reptile_Coelurosauravus>

I love Coelurosauravus! I mean, I love all gliding reptiles, but I love it when nature says "shhh it's okay to make fantasy dragons whose osteoderms form spokes for their wings, it's happened before". Also, one of the fossils was apparently found in Tyne and Wear, near where I used to live! (Most specimens are from Germany, there just happens to be one from the UK - the specimen from the UK is mentioned in that paper!).

To help people visualise I'll just post this image by Nobu Tamura (he draws most paleontology images for Wikipedia)

But yes, I knew about Coelurosauravus, mostly because I grew up watching a 'cool' sci fi show called Primeval and the time-travel research team had a pet Coelurosauravus called Rex - it was only later during a late-night researching session trying to justify my dragon desgins that I stumbled across Frey, Sues and Munk's article from 1997.

They decided that the wing spokes were not ribs for a number of reasons: there were 22 long spokes but only 13 vertebrae in that region and the visible ribs were strongly curved, very unlike the ribs of other gliding lizards. They concluded it was dermal specialisations, as there was no way else for these rods to evolve.