Re: Pterosaurs, and more pterosaurs!

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting Chris Bennett <cbennett@bridgeport.edu>:

> I could produce a data matrix and analyze with PAUP to produce
> a "cladogram" showing that Gnathosaurus, gharials, and needlefish were most
> closely related if I used enough characters related to adaptations to
> feeding on fishes, but that would not prove a close relationship.

This brings to mind something that's been bothering me for a while about
*Gnathosaurus*.  I'm going from memory here, but I seem to remember that in the
skull reconstructions in Wellnhofer's encyclopedia, the back part of the
*Gnathosaurus* skull looks more like *Germanodactylus* than it looks like
*Ctenochasma*, while the back part of *Ctenochasma*'s skull looks more like an
ornithocheirid.  Are these just faulty reconstructions, or is it possible that
*G* and *C* are not closely related after all and merely share similar feeding
adaptations?

Nick Pharris
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan