#nyctosaurid

[ppaleoartistgallery]

Lemuria Flocking #1 (28/06/2025)

Joschua is in Poland atm so for this week's #Paleostream Gnath and I hosted a #LemuriaChallenge themed flocking where we sketched Megalognathus, The Harbinger Bird (Unusqui scitpericuli), Cervidactylus elegans, and The Last Stegosaur (Deimaximerror cacasexano)

[derived-centrosaur]

Spec-Dinovember Day 8: The Floor is Lava, a pterosaur with reduced or absent legs

Marevagus prognathops is a highly specialized nyctosaurid that can be found across the Pacific during the Late Creatceous. From Zealandia to Laramidia they use dynamic soaring to cross thousands of miles of open ocean, often riding the wind gradients ahead of storm clouds. Like other nyctosaurs they lack any fingers save for the wing finger, and these along with the entire wing are long and narrow to best fit their preferred flight style. Other nyctosaurs have proportionally small legs, which when paired with their long arms, makes them a bit cumbersome on the ground. Marevagus are extreme long-range specialists, only landing on solid ground to breed and nest, and as such have taken this to the extreme. Their legs are no more than thin bony rods, used mainly to expand and contract their enlarged uropatagium for fine flight maneuvering. They are able to move about if grounded, but they don't move their legs independently, instead both of the legs and the body move altogether, giving them an odd tripod-like gait. They are quite adept at water launching, though this is energy-intensive so they commonly only land on the surface when the wind has calmed and they are waiting for a renewed gust to ride upon. They also hunt upon the wing. Unlike other marine pterosaurs who hunt by diving, dipping, or surface-seizing, Marevagus are the only pterosaurs to engage in surface-skimming. Their lengthened lower jaw is laterally compressed along much of its length to reduce drag. Their jaw-joint and closing muscles, as well as their neck muscles, are all heavily built and beefy to resist the drag experienced when the lower jaw is submerged. The corners of the mouth and beak as well as the tongue are covered in keratinous papillae and serrations that they use to hold fish that have already been caught letting them maximize the amount of time they are skimming when they encounter a school of fish. The main breeding ground for these pterosaurs is upon the Meiji and Detroit volcanic islands, at the head of what will one day become the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain.

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I knew what I wanted to do for this prompt from the moment I read it. A legless pterosaur is either spending all its time flying or it's become a Dougal Dixon level creature. Fortunately there are plenty of birds today that spend so much time in flight that their legs have atrophied to the point they can't properly walk: Hummingbirds, swifts, and just about any Procellariiforme that isn't an albatross or giant petrel. Nyctosaurids were the chosen group of pterosaur because they show evidence of a locking mechanism in their wings which when paired with their lack of fingers (the only pterosaurs to do that) they seem to have been the Cretaceous equivalent of petrels and albatrosses. Cool, let's take that to the natural extreme! Also pterosaurs are often shown skim-feeding, but this would 100% rip the jaw off any known pterosaur. The only birds that skim, the genus Rynchops, have very weird beaks, skulls, and eyes in order to feed that way, and no known pterosaur has anything in common with these birds that would even hint at skimming being possible. So naturally that's what I had to have this one do, and it also lets it hunt without landing so even more incentive to ditch the legs. And I figured the fish-storing beak thing of puffins and razorbills would fit here too. Finally, I had a look at the Emperor seamounts to see if any had appeared in the Mesozoic, only the earliest ones seem to have been active by the Late Cretaceous. I wanted to incorporate some volcanic island so that even when the pterosaur lands the floor will still be 'lava'

[taphonomenon]

I had a dream where they found a Nyctosaurid in the Green River Formation

It was a tiny pterosaur but definitely from the Eocene

[harpagornis]

Artsvi tsnonter

Nyctosaurid Earth

(Note: is an AU, not canon to the main project. Essentially, just replace birds with nyctosaurs and its the same world, otherwise ruled by m

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Alcione

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: Alcione elainus

First Described: 2018

Described By: Longrich et al.

Classification: Avemetatarsalia, Ornithodira, Pterosauromorpha, Pterosauria, Macronychoptera, Novialoidea, Breviquartossa, Pterodactylomorpha, Monofenestrata, Pterodactyliformes, Caelidracones, Pterodactyloidea, Eupterodactyloidea, Ornithocheiroidea, Pteranodontoidea, Pteranodontia, Nyctosauridae

In 2018, an incredibly productive fossil locality was reported from the phosphate beds of Morocco. Dating to the very end of the Cretaceous( about 66 million years ago), a wealth of pterosaur fossils have been recovered from it. One of these is Alcione. Alcione is a small nyctosaurid, with a 2 meter wingspan, known from a ton of bones. It has proportionally short and robust wings, with shortened wing fingers - a stark contrast to the incredibly long wings of Nyctosaurus. Interestingly, there is variation in the shape of some of the bones such as the humerus, possibly an indicator of age, sexual dimorphism, or multiple species of Alcione. Because of its short wings, Alcione is thought to have possibly been a plunge-diver, diving into the water to grab fish.

Source:

Longrich, N.R., Martill, D., Andres, B. 2018. Late Maastrichtian pterosaurs from North Africa and mass extinction of Pterosauria at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. PLOS Biology 16(4): e1002627.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Simurghia

By Midiaou Diallo; 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: Simurghia robusta

First Described: 2018

Described By: Longrich et al.

Classification: Avemetatarsalia, Ornithodira, Pterosauromorpha, Pterosauria, Macronychoptera, Novialoidea, Breviquartossa, Pterodactylomorpha, Monofenestrata, Pterodactyliformes, Caelidracones, Pterodactyloidea, Eupterodactyloidea, Ornithocheiroidea, Pteranodontoidea, Pteranodontia, Nyctosauridae

Simurghia is another nyctosaurid from late Cretaceous Morocco. This one is only known from a single humerus similar to that of Alcione, but twice the size. In spite of its incompleteness, subtle features in the humerus differentiate it from all other nyctosaurids. Like other nyctosaurids, it was likely a coastal fish-eater. The humerus doesn’t seem to be as adapted for diving as that of Alcione, and its rarity indicates it might have frequented the shores a bit less often.

Source:

Longrich, N.R., Martill, D., Andres, B. 2018. Late Maastrichtian pterosaurs from North Africa and mass extinction of Pterosauria at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. PLOS Biology 16(4): e1002627.

[pterosauria]

Nyctosaurus by ~PaleoFreak:

A pair of Nyctosaurus gracilis (probably two males).