Brian Andres

• PhD
• Lecturer at University College Birmingham

Here, we describe a new Jehol tapejarid skeleton tentatively referred to Sinopterus dongi, revealing some valuable cranial information about the palate and mandibular symphysis of this species. In the palate, the absence of the lateral process of the pterygoid indicates that the subtemporal fenestra is undivided, in contrast to the well-developed l...

Here, we describe the first pterosaur remains from Angola, an assemblage of fourteen bones from the Lower Maastrichtian marine deposits of Bentiaba, Namibe Province. One new species is introduced, Epapatelo otyikokolo, gen. et sp. nov., which comprises an articulated partial left humerus and ulna as well as an articulated left ulna and radius (from...

The tapejarid pterosaurs flourished in the Jehol Biota with an abundance of immature individuals and a rarity of individuals at skeletal maturity. Most of these individuals plot well on an ontogenetic series based on the proportions of limb elements, but this has lacked histological evidence until now. Here, a new wing skeleton of Sinopterus was th...

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. The timing of their origin is still debated, and hypotheses range from the end of the Permian Period, to the lower Mesozoic Era, and through to the Middle–Late Triassic epochs. Regardless of when they originated, the oldest records are restricted to the Upper Triassic Norian Stage in t...

Quetzalcoatlus is the largest flying organism ever known and one of the most familiar pterosaurs to the public. Despite a half century of interest, it remains very incompletely described. This shortfall is addressed here through a full morphological description of Quetzalcoatlus and the other pterosaur material of Big Bend National Park, Texas. The...

The Azhdarchidae have come to be known as the most diverse clade of Late Cretaceous pterosaurs and the largest flying creatures in existence. Since the erection of the taxon nearly four decades ago, many partial specimens have been referred to it from the Early Cretaceous and Late Jurassic, but none of these identifications can be confirmed. The mo...

Field crews from The University of Texas at Austin first identified pterosaur remains from the Upper Cretaceous Javelina Formation of Big Bend National Park in 1971 and continued excavation of these animals for decades. The announcement of the giant Quetzalcoatlus northropi in 1975 by graduate student Douglas Lawson drew worldwide attention, and fo...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2001663.].

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight and the largest animals to ever take wing. The pterosaurs persisted for over 150 million years before disappearing at the end of the Cretaceous, but the patterns of and processes driving their extinction remain unclear. Only a single family, Azhdarchidae, is definitively known from the...

Distal humerus of Tethydraco and Pteranodon. Comparison of Pteranodon YPM 1175 in ventral (A) and dorsal (C) views to T. regalis FSAC-OB 1 in ventral (B) and dorsal (D) views, showing the different degree of development of the entepicondyle and ectepicondyle. (JPG)

Femora of Tethydraco and Pteranodon. Femora of (A) T. regalis FSAC 201 and Pteranodon (B) YPM 2597 and (C) YPM 1175. (JPG)

Vectorized version of Fig 20. (EPS)

Catalogue of specimens examined in the course of this study. (CSV)

Functional diversity character-taxon matrix and references. (XLSX)

Humeri of Tethydraco and Pteranodon. T. regalis FSAC-OB 1 (A) compared to Pteranodon (YPM 2709) (B). Arrows denote the position of the base of the deltopectoral crest and the ulnar crest. (JPG)

Ulnae of Tethydraco and Pteranodon. (A) T. regalis FSAC-OB 199 and Pteranodon (B) YPM 2499, (C) YPM 2497, and (D) YPM 2409. (JPG)

Variation in the humeri of Alcione. (JPG)

Character-taxon matrix for phylogenetic analysis. (TXT)

Humeri of Alcione, Simurghia, and Barbaridactylus. (A) A. elainus FSAC-OB 5 to (B) S. robusta FSAC-OB 7, and (C) B. grandis FSAC-OB 8. (TIF)

Notes on provenance and stratigraphy of the phosphate pterosaurs; systematics and taxonomy; discussion of affinities of P. barbarulna; and age of “N.” lamegoi. (DOCX)

Fragmentary cervical vertebral elements of a gigantic pterosaur are described from the upper Campanian-Maastrichtian Nemegt Formation in the Gobi Desert. With an estimated width of a posterior centrum across the postexapophyses of 198 mm, this taxon represents one of the largest pterosaurs currently known. This is the first discovery of a pterosaur...

Fragmentary cervical vertebral elements of a gigantic pterosaur are described from the upper Campanian–Maastrichtian Nemegt Formation in the Gobi Desert. With an estimated width of a posterior centrum across the postexapophyses of 198 mm, this taxon represents one of the largest pterosaurs currently known. This is the first discovery of a pterosaur...

Background In the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota, the toothless pterosaurs flourished with the chaoyangopterids and tapejarids playing a key role in understanding the early diversity and evolution of the Azhdarchoidea. Unlike the more diverse tapejarids, the rarer chaoyangopterids are characterized by a long and low rostrum, supporting a close relati...

A undescribed chaoyangopterid (LPM-L112113). An incomplete skeleton includes skull, lower jaws, forelimbs and partial hindlimbs, collected from the Jiufotang Formation of Shangheshou, Chaoyang, western Liaoning. Scale bar = 10 mm. (TIF)

Rostrum of the undescribed chaoyangopterid (LPM-N081607) from the Jiufotang Formation of Shangheshou, Chaoyang, western Liaoning. (TIF)

Branch lengths as well as Bremer, Bootstrap, and Jacknife scores for the node numbers from the phylogenetic analysis in TNT shown in S3 Fig. (XLSX)

A TNT executable file. (TNT)

Single most parsimonious cladogram from the phylogenetic analysis of Jidapterus edentus and the relationships of Pterosauria. TNT node numbers are depicted below the branches that subtend the nodes. Branch lengths and support measures are listed in S1 Table. (TIF)

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The biogeographical history of pterosaurs has received very little treatment. Here, we present the first quantitative analysis of pterosaurian biogeography based on an event-based parsimony method (Treefitter). This approach was applied to a phylogenetic tree comprising the relationships of 108 in-group pterosaurian taxa, spanning the full range of...

The pterosaurs were a diverse group of Mesozoic flying reptiles that underwent a body plan reorganization, adaptive radiation, and replacement of earlier forms midway through their long history, resulting in the origin of the Pterodactyloidea, a highly specialized clade containing the largest flying organisms. The sudden appearance and large suite...

The pterosaurs, Mesozoic flying reptiles, attained wingspans of more than 10 m that greatly exceed the largest birds and challenge our understanding of size limits in flying animals. Pterosaurs have been used to illustrate Cope's rule, the influential generalization that evolutionary lineages trend to increasingly large body sizes. However, unambig...

: Phylogenetic analyses of early pterosaur species are relatively new and contradictory. However, they imply a similar evolutionary history for early pterosaurs: a large divergence of all major early groups of pterosaurs before the first named pterosaur species appeared in the fossil record. This large, unsampled divergence may be a record of the i...

The state of Texas has one of the greatest records of pterosaurs in the world, surpassing all other US states and most countries in the number of occurrences. Uniquely, this record extends over the entire 150+ million history of the Pterosauria. A review of this pterosaur record confirms at least 30 pterosaurs known from 13 occurrences, including f...

A fundamental contribution of paleobiology to macroevolutionary theory has been the illumination of deep time patterns of diversification. However, recent work has suggested that taxonomic diversity counts taken from the fossil record may be strongly biased by uneven spatiotemporal sampling. Although morphological diversity (disparity) is also freq...

Flapping flight has evolved independently in three vertebrate clades: pterosaurs, birds and bats. Each clade has a unique flight mechanism involving different elements of the forelimb. Here, patterns of limb integration are examined using partial correlation analysis within species and matrix correlation analysis across species to test whether the...

http://tinyurl.com/standingpaleo

A new rhamphorhynchid pterosaur species, Sericipterus wucaiwanensis, gen. et sp. nov., is described from the Upper Jurassic part of the Shishugou Formation in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwest China. Pterosaurs from this unit are the earliest and only records of pterosaurs in the Jurassic of northwest China. The individual specimen is one...

Although dinosaur fossils are common in the Early Cretaceous strata of Öösh, remains of other vertebrates are rare. Here we describe the first pterosaur fossil known from this locality. The specimen consists of a single vertebra that exhibits sufficient morphology to identify it as a nonazhdarchid tapejaroid pterosaur. Remains of such animals have...

The largest known flying organisms are the azhdarchid pterosaurs, a pterodactyloid clade previously diagnosed by the characters of their extremely elongate middle-series cervical vertebrae. The named species of the Azhdarchidae are from the Late Cretaceous. However, isolated mid-cervical vertebrae with similar dimensions and characters have been re...

Istiodactylus sinensis, sp. nov., from the Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning, People's Republic of China, is described on the basis of a single nearly complete and nearly osteologically adult specimen. This is the tenth pterosaur described from this formation and the eighteenth pterosaur species described from northeastern China in almost half as man...

Two new species of pterodactyloid pterosaurs from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning, Peopleís Republic of China, are described on the basis of an articulated partial postcranium and a nearly complete skeleton. A phylogenetic analysis of the Pterodactyloidea places the first species in the Gnathosaurinae, a group of ctenochasmatid pterosaurs with elo...