Re: back to pteros

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Peters" <davidrpeters@earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 1:26 PM

> The first ptero egg turned out to be an anurognathid. You're not going to 
> get
> additional rostrum shortening in this clade,

Why? I can easily imagine it. For example my rostrum is _a lot_ shorter than 
even that of the quite immature holotype of *Anurognathus ammoni*. And that 
in spite of the fact that my eyes are much smaller relative to total head 
size.

> www.pterosaurinfo.com/haopterid_egg.html
>
> Note that the rostrum shows no shortening whatsoever.

Compared to, say, an adult *Dsungaripterus*, your reconstruction _is_ quite 
cute. Not any cuter than a 1-year-old crocodile, but still! That said, I 
doubt the existence of the skull you "found" in the first place... look, it 
has a hole instead of a braincase...

> Your examples of gharials and cranes unfortunately slipped back into 
> archosaurs,
> which are born cuter than most, as noted earlier.

I haven't seen enough hatchling lepidosaurs to be able to support that 
statement.

> with regard to David Marjanovic's entreaties to find examples where the 
> Photoshop
> method works better than microscopic observations, I can think of only  a 
> one
> example where that has been tested by others
>
> 1. The original Langobardisaurus paper by Silvio Renesto described a 
> complete
> skeleton with a skull and cervical series preserved beneath the rib cage. 
> The
> reconstruction showed a rather low skull with Macrocnemus proportions. My 
> tracing
> of a photo indicated a large, short-snouted, giant orbit (rather juvenile 
> in all
> aspects!) skull that subsequently was validated by the third 
> Langobardisaurus
> specimen with a skull out in the open.

How detailed was your tracing? Was it just a big triangle with a big circle 
near one edge? Or was it recognizable as a prolacertiform skull? In the 
former case I don't know how I could tell that single occurrence apart from 
a coincidence.

> Other observations, such as the posterior of Longisquama, the forelimbs of
> Sharovipteryx, the narrow chord wing on Sordes, the palate of 
> Jeholopterus, the
> sclerotic ring that turned out to be a premaxilla in Tischlinger's tiny
> anurognathus and the like, have yet to be considered by others in print ? 
> one way
> or the other. Private requests to demonstrate alternate reconstructions 
> and
> phylogenies based on same have all gone unanswered ? but you can't blame 
> them if
> there's nothing there!

Unfortunately -- I'm not trying to be funny here -- many people believe 
there is such a thing as a question that doesn't "deserve" an answer. Some 
of those people seem to think you're just a generic pseudoscientist, and 
think it's a waste of time to discuss with pseudoscientists. For example, it 
took _decades_ before someone wrote a book that debunks Erich von Däniken 
(who gets rich by saying everything prehistoric was done by the 
extraterrestrials or at least for them), and not because it would have been 
difficult!

Anyone willing to sponsor me a trip to Kirgizstan or wherever the fossil of 
*Longisquama* resides, and to bribe or otherwise persuade the curators into 
letting me prepare it further? I'd be glad to test hypotheses like the 
hindquarters and the single or triple antorbital fenestra... a good look at 
the parabelievable parafeathers would be great while I am at it... 
Seriously. I think I could interrupt the work on my thesis for a few weeks.