David M. Martill’s research while affiliated with University of Portsmouth and other places

... Linear regression performed on a bivariate plot of wingspan versus ulna length for the entire dataset was used to predict the wingspan of OAKRM 2023.66 using the predicted minimum length when complete of~300 mm and wingspan calculated at 2.1 times the forelimb length. This method follows that of Etienne et al. (2024). ...

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A large pterosaur from the Middle Jurassic (lower Bajocian) of Rutland, United Kingdom

... Many fossil Konservat Lagerstätten have become well-known for the quality of preservation, and to some degree abundance of pterosaur skeletons (Unwin, 2005;Wellnhofer, 1991;Witton 2013). Perhaps most notable among these are the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen-type plattenkalk formations of southern Germany (e.g., Tischlinger & Frey 2015), the Lower Cretaceous Crato and Santana formations of Brazil (e.g., Martill & Brito, 2017) and the Yixian and Jiufotang formations of China (e.g., Lü et al., 2013). In all of these deposits, pterosaurs occur as partial or fully articulated skeletons, sometimes in 3D, and often with associated soft tissues preserved (Bestwick, 2018;Frey et al., 2003;Kellner et al., 2010;Martill & Unwin, 1989). ...

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Dietary tendencies of the Early Jurassic pterosaurs Campylognathoides Strand, 1928 and Dorygnathus Wagner, 1860, with additional evidence for teuthophagy in Pterosauria

... These fossils have greatly expanded the diversity, disparity, and temporal distribution of Mesozoic birds, refining our knowledge of the evolutionary path leading to the characteristic avian body plan, such as feathers and powered flight, locomotion and habitat differentiation, diet and digestion, reproduction and development, feather colours and display. In particular, studies on the geological background of the Jehol Biota that produced the majority of the Chinese Cretaceous birds have provided important clues to our understanding of the taphonomy as well as the interaction between deep geology process and biological evolution in the Early Cretaceous. the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, dominated Mesozoic skies from the Late Triassic to the end-Cretaceous, a span of around 154 million years(Martill and Smith 2024). They achieved their greatest diversity in the mid-Cretaceous and had become globally distributed, even occurring at high latitudes and in a wide range of habitats. ...

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The Cretaceous World (GSL SP544)

... Ornithopods are the most common dinosaurs registered in the Lower Cretaceous sediments of Europe. This group is represented by small hypsilophodontids, such as Hypsilophodon foxii (e.g., [1,2]), Gideonmantellia [3], and Vectidromeus [4]; scarce rhabdodontomorphans [5]; small dryosaurids like Valdosaurus [6]; and medium to large styracosternans (e.g., [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]). The latter is the most prominent and well-known group in Europe, especially in the pre-Albian sediments, with an exquisite representation constituted by the mediumsized Mantellisaurus [8,24], Morelladon [16], Brighstoneus [22], and Portellsaurus [23] and the large-sized taxa Magnamanus [25], Iguanodon galvensis [18,26], and I. bernissartensis [7,15,17]. ...

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Systematic of a Massively Constructed Specimen of Iguanodon galvensis (Ornithopoda, Iguanodontidae) from the Early Barremian (Early Cretaceous) of Eastern Spain

... The nomenclature Morocco (south-eastern) and Algeria (western) showing the outcrops of the Kem Kem Group in the Tafilalt region. The Kem Kem Group rock exposures were adapted from Sereno et al. (1996) by Smith et al. (2023b) and modified here. The star indicates Taouz, the area from which the fossils described here come from. ...

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New theropod dinosaur remains from the Upper Cretaceous of the Kem Kem Group (Eastern Morocco) clarify spinosaurid morphology

... Current lepisosteids are mostly freshwater, occasionally frequenting brackish waters; while only one species, Atractosteus tristoechus, survives marine environments Grande, 2010). However, during the Mesozoic, there were more taxa that were considered fully marine (Alvarado-Ortega et al., 2016;Brito et al., 2017;Cooper et al., 2023). ...

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Lepisosteidae remains (Holostei: Ginglymodi) from the Middle Cretaceous Alcântara Formation, Northeastern Brazil

... This sandstone occurs just above the Hauterivian/Barremian boundary ( [27]; see also [28]), and we therefore regard its stratigraphic age as early Barremian. ...

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A new sauropod dinosaur hindlimb from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation, Isle of Wight, UK

... The predatory plesiosaur clade Rhomaleosauridae that dominated in Early Jurassic seas started to disappear, meeting its final demise in the Callovian (late Middle Jurassic; ∼161.5 Ma) (e.g., Benson et al., 2015b), while Pliosauridae and Plesiosauroidea diversified. Pliosaurids established a successful clade of macropredators (Thalassophonea) that had regulated the upper tier of marine ecosystems since at least the early Bajocian (∼171 Ma) (Sachs et al., 2023) until the Turonian (early Late Cretaceous; ∼90 Ma; Madzia, 2016;Madzia et al., 2019) and comprised some of the largest aquatic predatory tetrapods that have ever lived, with forms exceeding lengths of 10 m (Knutsen et al., 2012b;Benson et al., 2013;Martill et al., 2023). Plesiosauroids, in turn, switched from microcleidid-rich communities common for Toarcian European epeiric seas to cryptoclidid faunas that represented the globally dominant plesiosauroid components in the Middle and Late Jurassic until they were replaced by leptocleidians and elasmosaurids near the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition (Benson and Druckenmiller, 2014). ...

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Exquisite skeletons of a new transitional plesiosaur fill gap in the evolutionary history of plesiosauroids

... A recent alternative rank-free phylogeny for Actinopterygii proposes Acipenseroidei as a synonym of Acipenseriformes but with the exclusion of Chondrosteidae and Peipiaosteidae as "pan-acipenseriforms" (Near & Thacker, 2024). Both fossil and living acipenseriforms are endemic to the northern hemisphere (but see Martill [2023] for a possible acipenseroid from the Upper Cretaceous of Gondwana) and have anatomically specialized skeletons with highly reduced bone ossification (Bemis et al., 1997;. Being predominantly cartilaginous, their unfavorable skeletal mineralogy is undoubtedly a key bias for their perceived scarcity in the fossil record as fragmentary remains are often difficult to identify at the genus or even family level (e.g., Hilton & Grande, 2006;Hilton et al., 2021). ...

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First occurrence of an acipenseriform (Chondrostei: Acipenseriformes) from the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation of England

... There are also abundant teeth, scales, and other remains of sauropods, pterosaurs, crocodyliforms, and chondrichthyan fishes (e.g., Amiot et al., 2004;Beevor et al., 2021;Cavin et al., 2010;Dutheil, 1999;Holwerda, 2020;Holwerda et al., 2018;Ibrahim et al., 2020a;Ibrahim et al., 2014a;Läng et al., 2013;McGowan & Dyke, 2009;Richter et al., 2013;Russell, 1996;Sereno et al., 1996;Smyth et al., 2020a;Wilson & Allain, 2015). Theropod (dental and non-dental) remains from the Kem Kem Group have previously been ascribed to Abelisauridae (Chiarenza & Cau, 2016;D'Orazi Porchetti et al., 2011;Mahler, 2005;Russell, 1996;Smyth et al., 2020a;Zitouni et al., 2019), Noasauridae (Evans et al., 2015;Smyth et al., 2020a), Spinosauridae (e.g., Dal Sasso et al., 2005;Evers et al., 2015;Hendrickx et al., 2016;Ibrahim et al., 2020b;Ibrahim et al., 2014bIbrahim et al., , 2020aMilner, 2003;Smith & Martill, 2023;Smyth et al., 2020b), Carcharodontosauridae Cau et al., 2012Cau et al., , 2013Ibrahim et al., 2020a;Paterna & Cau, 2022;Sereno et al., 1996), Dromaeosauridae (Amiot et al., 2004;Ibrahim et al., 2020a;Richter et al., 2013) as well as the indeterminate averostran Deltadromeus Rauhut & Carrano, 2016;Sereno et al., 1996), revealing a particularly high theropod diversity in the middle Cretaceous of northern Africa (Benyoucef et al., 2015;Fanti et al., 2014;Ibrahim et al., 2020a;Läng et al., 2013). Historically, isolated theropod teeth from the Kem Kem Group of Morocco were first reported and illustrated in the mid 20th century by French paleontologist René Lavocat (1948) and French geologists Georges Choubert and colleagues (1952), respectively (Cavin et al., 2010). ...

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A combined approach to identify isolated theropod teeth from the Cenomanian Kem Kem Group of Morocco: cladistic, discriminant, and machine learning analyses