Caelestiventus hanseni, the new Triassic pterosaur from Utah
August 13, 2018
We don’t post on pterosaurs very often, but I’m making an exception for Caelestiventus. Mostly because I had the unusual experience of holding a life-size 3D print of its skull a few days before it was published. Brooks Britt and George Engelmann are both attending Flugsaurier 2018 in Los Angeles, and Brooks gave a talk on the new pterosaur on Friday. It’s from the Upper Triassic Saints & Sinners Quarry in far northeastern Utah, which has also produced theropods, sphenosuchian crocs (like 80 individuals to date, no exaggeration), drepanosaurs (I’ve seen the material and that paper is going to be mind-blowing whenever it arrives), and other assorted hellasaurs. Some of that material is figured in the Britt et al. (2016) paper on the Saints & Sinners Quarry (a free download from the link below). As far as I know, the Caelestiventus paper is the second big volley on the Saints & Sinners material, out of what will probably be a long stream of important papers.
Anyway, since we’ve just been discussing the utility of 3D printing in paleontology (1, 2), I thought you’d like to see this. Brooks did caution us that the 3D model was a work in progress, and he now thinks that Caelestiventus had a more convex dorsal skull margin, with the downward forehead dip in the version that got printed being less prominent or absent. You can see a slightly different version in the skull recon drawn by second author Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia, which he kindly released into the public domain here.
Otherwise the 3D print is pretty good. The big plate below the orbit is weird and from what I gather not present in other dimorphodontids. Because the Saints & Sinners material was buried in sand, which is relatively incompressible compared to mud and clay, it’s all preserved in three dimensions with essentially no crushing. Caelestiventus therefore yields new information about Dimorphodon micronyx, which has been known since 1859 but mostly from pancaked material.
Stay tuned (in general, not here necessarily) for more on the remarkable tetrapods of the Sants & Sinners Quarry – the next few years are going to be very exciting. And since this may be my first and last Flugsaurier post, many thanks to the organizers for making it such an engaging and enjoyable experience, especially Mike Habib, Liz Martin-Silverstone, and Dave Hone.
References
- Britt, B.B., Chure, D.J., Engelmann, G.F. and Shumway, J.D., 2016. Rise of the erg—paleontology and paleoenvironments of the Triassic-Jurassic transition in northeastern Utah. Geology of the Intermountain West 3:1-32.
- Britt, Brooks B.; Dalla Vecchia, Fabio M.; Chure, Daniel J.; Engelmann, George F.; Whiting, Michael F.; Scheetz, Rodney D. 2018. Caelestiventus hanseni gen. et sp. nov. extends the desert-dwelling pterosaur record back 65 million years. Nature Ecology & Evolution. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0627-y
Afield in Oklahoma, part 2
June 27, 2018
Ripple rock. Not from the Morrison, but from the overlying Dakota – Lower Cretaceous.
Now this is from the Morrison. My son, London, spotted this tiny tooth of a Jurassic croc while working in the quarry. That’s my thumb and London’s index finger for scale.
London’s index finger again, pointing at a different Morrison tooth. This one’s from a theropod, still exposed in a sandstone block in one of Stovall’s old quarries from the 1930s.
On a completely different hillside, I spotted this skull, of a modern rodent. Vole, maybe? Not my bailiwick, but if you know who this belongs to, let me know in the comments.
Moonrise – and the end of this post. Catch you in the future.
Afield in Oklahoma
June 25, 2018
Clouds over Black Mesa.
Baby spadefoot toad, with my index finger for scale.
Someone was here before us. Even though Black Mesa is best known for its Morrison exposures and giant Jurassic dinosaurs, there are Triassic rocks here, too, which have produced both body fossils and tracks, including these.
Seen but not photographed today:
- a group of pronghorn by the side of the road, with two babies;
- a deer that ran across the road right in front of our vehicle;
- a wild turkey foraging in the ditch next to the road;
- a few jackrabbits, and more cottontails than you can shake a stick at;
- loads of prairie dogs.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch a thunderstorm.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 