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A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea)
BACKGROUND: The Tapejaridae is a group of unusual toothless pterosaurs characterized by bizarre cranial crests. From a paleoecological point of view, frugivorous feeding habits have often been suggested for one of its included clades, the Tapejarinae. So far, the presence of these intriguing flying...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22802931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0038900 |
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author | Vullo, Romain Marugán-Lobón, Jesús Kellner, Alexander W. A. Buscalioni, Angela D. Gomez, Bernard de la Fuente, Montserrat Moratalla, José J. |
author_facet | Vullo, Romain Marugán-Lobón, Jesús Kellner, Alexander W. A. Buscalioni, Angela D. Gomez, Bernard de la Fuente, Montserrat Moratalla, José J. |
author_sort | Vullo, Romain |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The Tapejaridae is a group of unusual toothless pterosaurs characterized by bizarre cranial crests. From a paleoecological point of view, frugivorous feeding habits have often been suggested for one of its included clades, the Tapejarinae. So far, the presence of these intriguing flying reptiles has been unambiguously documented from Early Cretaceous sites in China and Brazil, where pterosaur fossils are less rare and fragmentary than in similarly-aged European strata. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Europejara olcadesorum gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by a unique combination of characters including an unusual caudally recurved dentary crest. It represents the oldest known member of Tapejaridae and the oldest known toothless pterosaur. The new taxon documents the earliest stage of the acquisition of this anatomical feature during the evolutionary history of the Pterodactyloidea. This innovation may have been linked to the development of new feeding strategies. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The discovery of Europejara in the Barremian of the Iberian Peninsula reveals an earlier and broader global distribution of tapejarids, suggesting a Eurasian origin of this group. It adds to the poorly known pterosaur fauna of the Las Hoyas locality and contributes to a better understanding of the paleoecology of this Konservat-Lagerstätte. Finally, the significance of a probable contribution of tapejarine tapejarids to the early angiosperm dispersal is discussed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3389002 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-33890022012-07-16 A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) Vullo, Romain Marugán-Lobón, Jesús Kellner, Alexander W. A. Buscalioni, Angela D. Gomez, Bernard de la Fuente, Montserrat Moratalla, José J. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: The Tapejaridae is a group of unusual toothless pterosaurs characterized by bizarre cranial crests. From a paleoecological point of view, frugivorous feeding habits have often been suggested for one of its included clades, the Tapejarinae. So far, the presence of these intriguing flying reptiles has been unambiguously documented from Early Cretaceous sites in China and Brazil, where pterosaur fossils are less rare and fragmentary than in similarly-aged European strata. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Europejara olcadesorum gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by a unique combination of characters including an unusual caudally recurved dentary crest. It represents the oldest known member of Tapejaridae and the oldest known toothless pterosaur. The new taxon documents the earliest stage of the acquisition of this anatomical feature during the evolutionary history of the Pterodactyloidea. This innovation may have been linked to the development of new feeding strategies. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The discovery of Europejara in the Barremian of the Iberian Peninsula reveals an earlier and broader global distribution of tapejarids, suggesting a Eurasian origin of this group. It adds to the poorly known pterosaur fauna of the Las Hoyas locality and contributes to a better understanding of the paleoecology of this Konservat-Lagerstätte. Finally, the significance of a probable contribution of tapejarine tapejarids to the early angiosperm dispersal is discussed. Public Library of Science 2012-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3389002/ /pubmed/22802931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0038900 Text en Vullo et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Vullo, Romain Marugán-Lobón, Jesús Kellner, Alexander W. A. Buscalioni, Angela D. Gomez, Bernard de la Fuente, Montserrat Moratalla, José J. A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title | A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title_full | A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title_fullStr | A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title_full_unstemmed | A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title_short | A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) |
title_sort | new crested pterosaur from the early cretaceous of spain: the first european tapejarid (pterodactyloidea: azhdarchoidea) |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22802931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0038900 |
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