Talk:Pterosaur

QN Quetzalcoatlus did not have additional control surfaces

I was involved in the design of MacCready's QN Quetzalcoatlus. The statement in the main article that extra control surfaces were added to the model is absolutely incorrect. A main point of the project was to show that the technology of that time allowed for a highly natural like flight design for the replica.

Where there was a major error is that during the mid 1980s it was widely thought that the main wing membrane did not attach to the legs, so the latter were folded up along the body like in flying birds. Hence the model lacked the elevator controls that could be obtained by having the main membrane attached to the ankles and the legs extended laterally and posteriorly.

Control was achieved by using the head for a rudder effect -- biomechanically dubious -- and varying the sweep of the wings forward and back for pitch control. It worked reasonably well and showed that a flying creatures flight could be replicated at a basic level by not resorting to extra aerodynamic surfaces.

The main article should be modified to correct the inaccurate information.

Gregory Paul — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.220.159.5 (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

You're correct, of course. I assume the tail used in launching gave rise to this misunderstanding.--MWAK (talk) 18:40, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Pycnofibres in all pterosaurs

"Most or all pterosaurs had hair-like filaments known as pycnofibers on the head and torso" Is there any primary research to support the "most or all"? As far as I know there is only evidence of pycnofibres in a few select taxa (Sordes, Jeholopterus, Pterorhynchus); it seems to me that it's quite the assumption to make that ALL pterosaurs had pycnofibres given the scarcity of data. 2A02:C7F:6017:E900:98B5:946F:ACD2:EDC5 (talk) 09:56, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

New Pterosaur

I found this https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.17.879783v1.full. Joan Wiffens Pterosaur was described, they named it Parirau ataroa or something like that--Bubblesorg (talk) 15:14, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

We should start a new article for this new pterosaur then. I've read part of the paper, and the phylogenetic analysis is very blurred, but it's explained at the bottom of it. From what I understood, a major change is that Pteranodontidae is grouped within Ornithocheirae, and sister taxon to either Ornithocheiridae or Targaryendraconia. So, if this is true, looks like we have to do a lot of work on these pterosaur articles on their classification? But then again, we could always wait for another paper supporting this conclusion. JurassicClassic767 (talk | contribs) 15:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

sure--Bubblesorg (talk) 18:11, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Edit request

In the Pterosaur#Expanding_research section, in the first sentence it currently says "by Richard Owen named as Dimorphodon,", this should be changed to "named as Dimorphodon by Richard Owen," as that makes more grammatical sense.146.112.56.112 (talk) 03:13, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done MxWondrous (talk) 15:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Why is there passive aggressive comments in the article? It’s unprofessional and should be reworded to be clear to the reader.

“It was thought that by the end of the Cretaceous, only large species of pterosaurs were present (no longer true; see below). The smaller species were thought to have become extinct, their niche filled by birds. However, pterosaur decline (if actually present) seems unrelated to bird diversity”

If the person who made these edits is so sure as to their fact, why not rewrite the wording instead of adding arbitrary clauses that take away from the information in the article.

The whole Evolution and Extinction part of the article seems to just be rambling on about research disagreements rather than explaining the current selected research findings that we point to.

The discussions raised aren’t specific, it’s fine to say that evolution and extinction of Pterosaurs has conflicting research but it doesn’t need that much detail and it reads like a university essay.

This is especially exacerbated when there is an entire section on the page about “History of Discovery” which is where that should go. If a user clicks on the extinction portion of the page, they don’t expect to be given a full historical rundown of different researchers who disagreed with each other. Polarctic (talk) 17:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)