Ptremendous

Natural History, Dec, 2001 by T.J. Kelleher

PTREMENDOUS A recent dig near Valencia, Spain, has uncovered a previously unknown pterosaur that may be the Largest animal ever to have taken wing. Workers digging in siltstone dating from the very Late Cretaceous found vertebrae and Limb bones indicative of a new species and genus of azhdarchid pterosaur, with the wingspan of individual adults ranging from sixteen to forty feet. This degree of variation is typical of several genera of flying reptiles, but the width is the greatest yet seen (the largest previously known specimen, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, had a wingspan of thirty-six feet). David Unwin, of Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin in Germany, one of the researchers who made the find, is suggesting that the variable and sometimes great size of these pterosaurs may be attributable to the animals' unusual sensitivity to their environment during growth.

Unwin's suggestion would account for both the variation within species and the size of the largest individuals. The duration and extent of growth in modern turtles, crocodiles, and other groups related to the pterosaurs is heavily influenced by environment (temperature, food availability), and Unwin thinks that pterosaurs shared that susceptibility, even though adult body size in other groups of flying vertebrates, including both living and extinct bats and birds, varies little and is largely independent of environmental influences. (Abstracts of "A Giant Azhdarchid Pterosaur From the latest Cretaceous of Valencia, Spain--The largest Flying Creature Ever?" and "Variable Growth Rate and Delayed Maturation: Do They Explain `Giant' Pterosaurs?" Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2001)