Ornithodesmus with animation

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

Ready fo ar/vr and game with animation The story of Ornithodesmus can be a confusing one as for a long time the genus was credited with being a pterosaur,‭ ‬whereas we now know this was a mistake.‭ ‬It all began in‭ ‬1887‭ ‬when Harry Govier Seeley described a set of six sacral vertebrae that he thought belonged to a bird.‭ ‬Seeley came up with the name Ornithodesmus which means‭ (‬bird link‭)‬.‭ ‬Then later in‭ ‬1887‭ ‬John Hulke‭ (‬in a paper without his name on it‭) ‬made the suggestion that Ornithodesmus was not a bird but actually a pterosaur.‭ ‬Seeley later conceded this and he too began to classify Ornithodesmus as a pterosaur,‭ ‬even creating a second species O.‭ ‬latidens in‭ ‬1901.‭ ‬Seeley however still thought the original holotype specimen of Ornithodesmus was very bird like,‭ ‬and so began to propose the notion that birds and pterosaurs shared a common ancestry‭ (‬something we now consider to simply not be true‭)‬.
The second species of Ornithodesmus was based upon far more complete pterosaur remains,‭ ‬and for this reason O.‭ ‬latidens was the public face presented to the wider public.‭ ‬Then in‭ ‬1993‭ ‬a startling discovery was made concerning the holotype specimen.‭ ‬In a‭ ‬1993‭ ‬study concerning the original sacral vertebrae that had been used to establish the type species in‭ ‬1887,‭ ‬Stafford C.‭ ‬Howse and Andrew Milner concluded that the holotype was not a bird nor even a pterosaur,‭ ‬but actually a theropod dinosaur.‭ ‬Howse and Milner considered the holotype to have come from a small troodontid,‭ ‬but later research by Peter Makovicky and Mark Norell showed that it was actually a dromaeosaurid,‭ ‬and while others have speculated that this specimen may have actually been a ceratosaur or coelophysid,‭ ‬most palaeontologists now agree that the holotype specimen of Ornithodesmus was a dromaeosaur.
Because the holotype specimen of Ornithodesmus is now confirmed as a dromaeosaurid dinosaur,‭ ‬all of the pterosaur fossils once attributed to the genus,‭ ‬including the second species have now been had a new genus created for them called Istiodactylus.‭ ‬Details about the lifestyle of Ornithodesmus are uncertain due to the lack of fossil remains for the genus,‭ ‬but we do know that as a dromaeosaurid dinosaur Ornithodesmus would have been a lightly built predator of small animals,‭ ‬featuring a sickle shaped killing claw on the second toe of each foot.‭ ‬Comparison to the body proportions of other dromaeosaurid dinosaurs indicates that Ornithodesmus would have grown to just under two meters in length. reptile dinosaur paleontology lizard wildlife animal creature extinct iguana tyrant acrocanthosaurus animals claw tyrannosauru rex amargasaurus immense wild danger nature