#nyctosauridae

[wispwumbo]

My ainting

[justgoji]

Muzquizopteryx coahuilensis with Hatsune Miku for scale to give you a sense of how small this pterosaur is

[archosaurophilia]

Life in the Age of Pterosaurs

Tethydraco from Apple TV+'s Prehistoric Planet . If you grew up with BBC's landmark documentary Walking With Dinosaurs like I did , you m...

I was inspired by the impressive diversity of pterosaurs that I recently saw in Prehistoric Planet to write this post. The last of the pterosaurs were more diverse than we could have imagined a few decades ago, and it is my hope that this post will serve to paint you a picture of the world that they lived in.

[alphynix]

It's been a whole four years since Weird Backs Month, so we're long overdue for a companion series:

Weird Heads Month!

Ever since heads first evolved as a defined body part, over 500 million years ago, evolution has been experimenting with them. There are many modern examples of animals that have modified parts of their heads and faces in a variety of strange-looking ways – elephants, deer, narwhals, hornbills, sawfish, bats, stalk-eyed flies, hammerheads, barreleyes, and star-nosed moles, to name only a few – and species in the fossil record were just as diverse and weird.

So let's start off with…

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Weird Heads Month #01: Wacky Flying Headgear

One of the most immediately recognizable examples of extinct animals with strange head structures are the pterosaurs, almost always depicted in pop culture with a large Pteranodon-like head crest.

But that wasn't anywhere near as weird as pterosaur crests got.

Nyctosaurus gracilis here had an absolutely ridiculous elaborate crest, sporting an enormous antler-like structure on the back of its skull that grew to lengths longer than its own body.

Living around the Western Interior Seaway of the Midwestern United States during the Late Cretaceous, around 85 million years ago, it was a fairly small pterosaur standing about 40cm tall without the crest (1'4") and with a 2m wingspan (6'6"). Its wings were long and narrow, and had completely lost the three small clawed fingers seen on other pterosaurs, suggesting it may have been less capable of moving around on the ground. It's thought to have been a specialized soaring flier that spent most of its life on the wing at sea, much like a modern albatross.

Made up of two long thin spars arising from a common base, Nyctosaurus' crest has sometimes been reconstructed with a large sail-like membrane of skin – but since there's no evidence at all of soft-tissue attachment on the bones, this seems unlikely. Juveniles were crestless, with only fully mature adults developing their spectacular headgear, so it was probably some sort of display structure.

It's also not clear whether there was any sexual dimorphism in Nyctosaurus, since well-preserved skulls with intact crests are incredibly rare. But as with most other crested pterosaurs it's likely that all mature individuals had crests, just with a difference in size and shape between sexes.

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[alphynix]

Do think it's possible that Nyctosaurs lost their fingers due to spending more time flying and swimming than any other species of pterosaur?

Yep, it’s thought that nyctosaurids may have lived similarly to some modern seabirds, only returning to land to breed. Since pterosaurs’ additional fingers seem to have mainly been used for support and grip during terrestrial movement, they weren’t really needed so much in nyctosaurids and there was no disadvantage to losing them entirely.

[palaeornithology]

A Nyctosaurus gracilis carrying its huge and ridiculous headgear over the Western Interior Seaway during a warm Cretaceous sunset.

[madiruss]

Surfasaurus (Spinosaurus and Nyctosauridae), displayed at the Recycled Rain Project in Portland, Oregon! 20% of every sale will be donated to the charity Water.org. 

Noodler’s Ink, gouache, and rainwater on 10” x 13” Arches cold press