Re: seeds and pterosaurs

[NJPharris@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/6/99 12:17:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
dbensen@gotnet.net writes:

> It seems that virtualy all pterosaurs were fish-eaters.

Well, most KNOWN pterosaurs seem to have been fish-eaters.

There is a very good reason for this:  small animals with delicate bones are 
very rarely preserved away from watery habitats.  If a pterosaur dies and 
falls into the water, the carcass gets buried very quickly and, potentially, 
preserved for us to find.  Away from water, the animals get ripped apart, the 
bones get stepped on and crushed or eaten away by microorganisms or by acidic 
soils (common in forested environments).

Most of the known early birds were also preserved in lake or ocean sediments 
(e.g. Archaeopteryx, Confuciusornis, hesperornithiforms, ichthyornithiformes, 
etc.).

It is quite likely, given the ecological distribution of modern birds and the 
existence of terrestrial pterosaurs like Sordes, that pterosaurs existed in a 
variety of terrestrial habitats, and that they included piscivores, 
insectivores, carnivores, and potentially even herbivores.  But conditions 
being what they are, we will have to be extremely lucky to find any but the 
largest and most robust of these, like the azhdarchids (I have heard that 
Quetzalcoatlus, at least, was likely a dry-land animal).

--Nick P.