Haopterus NOT a pterodactylid!

[bh480@scn.org]

dinosaur@usc.edu
From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
Haopterus NOT a pterodactylid!

Here's a message I received from Dave Peters about the new 
Liaoning pterosaur viewed at 
http://www.scichina.com/ky/0113/kyfm13.stm:

Thanks for the post to the dino list on the new pterosaur 
from China (Wang and Lü 2001).  I did a quick tracing and 
discovered that this is no pterodactylid. The wingspread 
is huge! It is much closer to an anhanguerid, considering 
the following: 1) the first wing phalanx is about the size 
of the skull; 2) the cervicals are short and robust; 3)
the manual claws are twice as deep as their associated 
penultimate phalanges; 4) the sternum is very large.  The 
interesting things I haven't seen before are those pseudo-
pteroids erupting between the first and second wing 
phalanges. I'll be contacting the authors and hopefully a 
new reconstruction will appear on pterosaurs.net in the 
near future.

Share this with the list if you wish.

David Peters