Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Lineage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur
"Traditionally, they [pterosaurs] are organized into two suborders:
  • Rhamphorhynchoidea (Plieninger, 1901): A group of early, basal ("primitive") pterosaurs, many of which had long tails and short metacarpal bones in the wing. They were small, and their fingers were still adapted to climbing[citation needed]. They appeared in the Late Triassic period, and lasted until the late Jurassic. Rhamphorhynchoidea is a paraphyletic group (since the pterodactyloids evolved directly from them and not from a common ancestor), so with the increasing use of cladistics it has fallen out of favor in most technical literature.


THE LINEAGE:



Rhamphorhynchoidea.
Long tail and teeth.







Pterodactyl.
Shortened tail and lack of teeth.










Modern bird (for example the albatross).

1 comment:

  1. The stork bears a remarkable resemblance to the pterodactyl pictured above. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CigüeñaenÁvila.jpg
    and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Asian_Openbill_I_IMG_4322.jpg.

    The stork has even been mistaken as a modern-day pterodactyl: "A series of sightings of a mysterious pterodactyl-like creature in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley in the 1970s has been attributed to an errant jabiru that became lost during a migratory flight and wound up in an unfamiliar region, or an Ephippiorhynchus stork escaped from captivity." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stork)

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