ptero embryo ID

[david peters <davidrpeters@earthlink.net>]

This was on my "hot" plate until some more compelling distractions interrupted 
my tracings. Of the two pterosaur eggs with embryos published by Nature 
(432:572 December 02, 2004) one was readily identified as a pterodaustrid. The 
other was not identified except as a pterosaur. It turns out to be a 
pre-haopterid, a very basal ornithocheirid, which, ironically, was the label 
given to the first pterosaur in an egg, which turned out to be an anurognathid. 
The egg is the right size to be passed by Haopterus. The proportions are quite 
similar in a reconstruction. 

www.pterosaurinfo.com/haopterid_egg.html

The big difference is the embryo does not have the rotated scapulae that 
characterizes Haopterus and all higher ornithocheirids. It also has relatively 
larger feet and a shorter tibia, as in ancestral scaphognathids. 

Anyway, just getting rid of some old business.

More later,
David Peters