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Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, by Mark P. Witton
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For 150 million years, the skies didn't belong to birds--they belonged to the pterosaurs. These flying reptiles, which include the pterodactyls, shared the world with the nonavian dinosaurs until their extinction 65 million years ago. Some pterosaurs, such as the giant azhdarchids, were the largest flying animals of all time, with wingspans exceeding thirty feet and standing heights comparable to modern giraffes. This richly illustrated book takes an unprecedented look at these astonishing creatures, presenting the latest findings on their anatomy, ecology, and extinction.
Pterosaurs features some 200 stunning illustrations, including original paintings by Mark Witton and photos of rarely seen fossils. After decades of mystery, paleontologists have finally begun to understand how pterosaurs are related to other reptiles, how they functioned as living animals, and, despite dwarfing all other flying animals, how they managed to become airborne. Here you can explore the fossil evidence of pterosaur behavior and ecology, learn about the skeletal and soft-tissue anatomy of pterosaurs, and consider the newest theories about their cryptic origins. This one-of-a-kind book covers the discovery history, paleobiogeography, anatomy, and behaviors of more than 130 species of pterosaur, and also discusses their demise at the end of the Mesozoic.
- The most comprehensive book on pterosaurs ever published
- Features some 200 illustrations, including original paintings by the author
- Covers every known species and major group of pterosaurs
- Describes pterosaur anatomy, ecology, behaviors, diversity, and more
- Encourages further study with 500 references to primary pterosaur literature
- Sales Rank: #666616 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-06-23
- Released on: 2013-06-23
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"A comprehensive introduction. . . . Witton manages to make this an attractive book for the layperson and bring these flying fossils to life."--Natural History
"Witton's new tribute to pterosaurs gives these fantastic fossil creatures a much-needed makeover in two crucial ways. Not only does the book bring the science of pterosaurs up to date--at long last following-up other classics such as David Unwin's The Pterosaurs and Peter Wellenhofer's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs--but Witton is a highly-skilled and imaginative artist who ably reconstructs the bones of the animals and brings them back to life in startling poses. Witton's pterosaurs are fantastical creatures deserving their own time in the spotlight. . . . Witton's combination of style and substance makes Pterosaurs a true treasure and an absolute must for anyone curious about the extinct flyers."--Brian Switek, National Geographic.com
"This really is the ultimate guide to pterosaurs, providing us with a richer view of pterosaur diversity and behaviour than allowed in the two previous great volumes on the group (Wellnhofer 1991, Unwin 2005) and containing a substantial amount of review and analysis of pterosaur ecology and functional morphology."--Darren Naish, Scientific American
"A solid review of the whole of the Pterosauria that'll be genuinely useful for researchers for many years. I'm sure I'll be typing 'Witton, (2013) stated . . .' quite a lot in the future and that, if anything, should be a good measure of how I rate this as a scientific text. Now go buy a copy and read it, it really is very good."--Dave Hone, Pterosaur.Net
"[Witton] presents the uncertainties of science but never shies away from making his opinion clear. [He] respects the complexities [of scientific writing] without allowing them to clump up the text. . . . I can wholeheartedly recommend the book already."--David Mass, DRIP
"Pterosaurs would make an excellent addition to any reference collection and especially that of an advanced (adult or young adult) lay-reader."--Greg Leitich Smith, GSL Blog
"I can tell you that it is not only a fascinating bit of text, its illustrations will leave you gaping in awestruck amazement."--John E. Riutta, Well-read Naturalist
"[Witton] combines his deep knowledge of the subject as a palaeontologist at the University of Portsmouth (U.K.) with his skills as an artist, and he has a flair for informal but accurate writing. His 292-page book is the most comprehensive and authoritative book to come along since Peter Wellnhofer's classic Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs back in 1991."--James Gurney, artist and author of the Dinotopia book series
"The joy of Pterosaurs is how it brings long extinct animals to life."--Jeff Hecht, New Scientist
"Learn all about flying reptiles in this artfully illustrated overview of pterosaur research."--Science News
"Highly recommended."--EverythingDinosaur.com
"Once dragons flew through Mesozoic skies! They were pterosaurs, and Witton offers a rich and extensive account of what science knows about these extinct creatures. . . . For those who want an introduction to flying reptiles or the craft of scientific research, this title is a great choice."--Eileen H. Kramer, Library Journal
"Beautifully laid out, clearly written, loaded with handsome illustrations, Witton's book invites you to dip in for delicious tidbits or hunker down for the equivalent of a superb lecture series."--Wilson's Bookmarks, Christianity Today
"This is a book of impeccable scholarship, but it is also very readable for the non-scholar and amateur pterosaurophile. . . . A wonderful book!"--Rabbi Dr Charles H Middleburgh, Middleburgh Blog
"Though the writing style clearly targets the book to nonexperts, it does not dilute its realized value for professional paleontologists or teachers of paleontology. This is a very skillful presentation: a brief introductory paragraph or two leads quickly into an advanced discussion. The illustrations are excellent, including nice reconstructions by the author and very high-quality photographic reproductions of original key fossils. Overall, this is a very well-done book that belongs in any library with a vertebrate paleontology collection."--Choice
"Although the text is mostly technical, directed at an informed audience, it is written with a humorous slant. Everyone will get something out of reading this book. . . . This is a fantastic book!"--Randy Lauff, Canadian Field Naturalist
"Witton's Pterosaurs is a remarkable visual feast, packed full of novel art as well as excellent photographs that the author clearly worked hard to obtain. There are, in fact, illustrations of some sort on virtually every single page--you will never get bored of looking at this book. . . . If you like or are even vaguely interested in pterosaurs, you really need this book."--Darren Naish, Historical Biology
From the Back Cover
"This book is both academically interesting and truly fun to read. That is a difficult balance to reach, but Witton does an excellent job of it by using a lighthearted, informal writing style in combination with a well-referenced, serious scientific review. An invaluable reference."--Michael Habib, University of Southern California
About the Author
Mark P. Witton is a paleontologist in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. He has served as a technical consultant for "Walking with Dinosaurs 3D" and many other film and television productions. His illustrations of pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and other prehistoric creatures have appeared in numerous publications, including "Science" and newspapers around the world.
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
One more excellent book on pterosaurs
By eagseags
Pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the Mesozoic, have always taken a back seat to dinosaurs in terms of popular books. I own three books on pterosaurs:
“The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs” by Peter Wellnhofer from 1991.
“The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time” by David Unwin from 2005.
"Pterosaurs" by Mark Witton from 2013.
These are all excellent books. The last is the subject of today's review. You should not confuse the Witton book "Pterosaurs" with a book from 2012 "Pterosaurs: Flying Contemporaries of the Dinosaurs," of which Witton is one of three coauthors.
By the way, the first popular book on pterosaurs "Dragons of the Air" (1901) by H.E. Seeley is available as a free e-book at [...]
Witton is at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmith. He is a freelance artist as well as a paleontologist and has a blog at [...] .
I will start with a little background on pterosaurs, which will make further discussions more understandable. Pterosaurs are the first vertebrates that learned powered flight. Compared to most vertebrates, pterosaurs tend to have extremely large heads and extremely small legs relative to their torsos. Many pterosaurs had a large ridge of bone above their dorsal vertebrae called the notarium, to which the scapula sometimes articulated. Bird wings are made of feathers attached to their (relatively short arms). Bat wings are made from skin stretched between the body and between five elongated fingers. Pterosaur wings were made from skin stretched from the body to an enormously elongated fourth finger, which is unique among vertebrates. There are enough fossils preserving the soft tissue of pterosaur wings, which is typically a few millimeters thick, that we can tell the wings contained, starting from the ventral side, a layer of blood vessels, a layer of muscle, and a layer of semi-rigid fibers. The wings and body of pterosaurs probably had some kind of fur or protofeathers, it is hard to tell which. All pterosaurs had a unique splint-like bone at the wrist called the pteroid, probably used to change the shape of the leading edge of the wing.
Despite having a very different wing structure, pterosaurs are convergent with birds on may features. They had bones with very thin walls (presumably for lightness). They had very rigidified ribcages, and there is evidence in the bones for air sacs. Presumably these features could have allowed for an efficient one-way respiration system as in birds. Their brains tended to be large and globular, like a bird’s, and not elongated like a typical reptile’s. All these point to a life as agile fliers requiring large amounts of energy. (Forget the antiquated idea of pterosaurs as gliders needing to jump off high cliffs to fly.)
Classically pterosaurs are divided into two types: rhamphorhynchoids (named for Rhamphorhynchus) and pterodactyloids (named for Pterodactylus). Rhamphorhynchoids lived from the Late Triassic until the Early Cretaceous. They generally were small and had large toothed heads on a short neck. They also had long tails with a rhomboid shaped vane at the end. Pterodactyloids lived from the Middle Jurassic until the Late Cretaceous. The had large heads on long necks, but no tails. Many of them were toothless.
The fact that pterosaur bones are hollow means that most fossils end up looking like “roadkill,” and the fine anatomical details, such as the shape of the joints, is usually erased.
Aspects of pterosaurs that were mysteries for 100 years are not so much of a mystery since about a decade ago. There are enough well-preserved specimens (e.g. from China) that we know where the wing membrane attached to the body. We have enough pterosaur trackways that we have a good idea of how they handled themselves on land: as quadrupeds walking with their legs underneath, walking on wrist pads and the sole of the foot. There are now several known pterosaur eggs, and we know pterosaur babies probably could fly as soon as they hatched. What remains a mystery is which branch of archosaurs the pterosaurs arose from. Also we do not know a specific animal that could be the "protopterosaur" ancestor, that could perhaps climb trees and glide in the style of a flying squirrel, but not fly.
Witton's "Pterosaurs" has 26 chapters, the first 8 deal with general findings on pterosaurs, their anatomy, how they flew, how they got along on the ground, how they reproduced, etc. This is very similar to what you find in Unwin's book. One interesting perspective from Witton is about the idea of "weight reduction." The classical idea is that pterosaurs acquired hollow bones and air sacs to make them lighter and more airworthy. Witton reverses this and says the idea is to take animals of a constant weight and make them larger (e.g. more surface area for flight). I'm not sure one can really distinguish the two in practice, but it is thought-provoking. Another idea presented by Witton is that the masses of pterosaurs are underestimated by most workers in the field, such that the mass per wing area is much smaller than that of living birds. If we allow for larger masses in pterosaurs, we can allow for more powerful muscles, which are needed for flight.
The real uniqueness of Witton's "Pterosaurs," compared to Unwin's book, is in the15 chapters on individual pterosaur subgroups. (There is a small irony here because the taxonomy is based on Unwin's system.) Each group is presented in detail: a discussion of each genus, unique features, the probable lifestyle, etc. Literature references are included. These chapters can be a little tough to get through in spots, since they are something like a professional review article, but that makes this book useful for professionals as well as interested amateurs like us. The first thing you learn is that pterosaur group names are pretty hard to remember (Anurognathidae, Wukongopteridae, Ctenochasmotoidae, etc.) But the important thing is that if you look within each group there is a tremendous diversity: longer vs. shorter heads, teeth vs. no teeth, crests vs. crests, larger vs. smaller legs and feet, long wings vs. short, claws on the hand vs. no claws, etc. Thus, pterosaurs were probably as diverse in anatomy and lifestyle as birds are now. Witton points out that the classical division into rhamphorhynchoids and pterodactyloids might not be useful in the sense that while pterodactyloids are probably a monophyletic group, the rhamphorhynchoids are probably a collection of primitive types, that might not be closely related to each other. Also, while we are pretty sure more groups of pterosaur are not likely to be identified, we know hardly anything about some groups like the Lonchodectidae because their remains are just so fragmentary.
Pterosaurs can have some really bizarre anatomy. For my money, the most bizarre snout belongs to Pterodaustro (from South America). Both its mandible and maxilla are upturned. The lower jaw has hundreds of extremely elongated teeth arranged in a comb-like formation. One can only imagine Pterodaustro using this apparatus to filter feed like a flamingo. The most bizarre crest is found in Nyctosaurus (from Kansas). The crest branches into two cylindrical spars, one pointing up and one pointing back. The crest is about three times as long as the skull and about 20% longer than the head, body, and legs combined. You look at this animal and your first thought is "No way that can be real." However, there are two specimens with the crest intact, so there is no doubt.
Speaking of crests, my impression from "Pterosaurs" is that the proportion of pterosaurs with crests is higher than anyone suspected before. While the crests of many pterosaurs are bony, or partly bony, some crests consist only of soft tissue. We see more of the latter now because we have more specimens with preserved soft tissue and/or we now know to look for soft tissue in fossils with ultraviolet light. The original Pterodactylus from Solnhofen, for instance, one of the first pterosaurs known, has a soft tissue crest along its entire snout. While a number of authors have suggested crests could have some aerodynamic or thermal function, it is most likely they were for sexual display since closely related species have different crests.
Pterosaurs attained a size range that birds never came close to matching. Quetzalcoatlus (from Texas) is usually depicted as the largest known pterosaur in popular books, but Quetzalcoatlus belongs to a family of extremely large pterosaurs, the Azhdarchidae. The largest known is Hazegopteryx. It probably stood as tall as a giraffe, had wingspan of about 11 meters, and had the longest skull (3 meters) of any non-marine tetrapod. It is interesting that there are many large flightless birds, but as far as we know, there are no secondarily-flightless pterosaurs, even among the largest ones.
The writing style of "Pterosaurs" is pretty informal, despite the "review article" format, sometimes verging on "cuteness." I don't mean this in a bad way. I was amused by section headings such as "In the Absence of Proper Data, Speculate Wildly" and figure captions such as "Tupandactulus imperator doing his best Clint Eastwood impression on the scrubby hinterland of the Aptian Crato lagoon."
"Pterosaurs" has the expected photographs of fossil specimens and some very clear diagrams, plus world maps showing where key pterosaurs fossils are found. The pictures that depict living pterosaurs are of two types: the pterosaur in a standard "takeoff" pose, such that different genera can be compared, and the pterosaur in "real life" situations, flying, fighting, eating, etc. All of the restorations are watercolors done by the author. I enjoyed them and they get the point across, but they struck me as more "artistic" than "scientific", compared to comparable illustrations by, say, John Gurche.
This book is well worth reading and is available at a reasonable price.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy
By P. Nicholson
A great source book from someone who seems to eat, drink and sleep Pterosaurs. Witton covers everything imaginable from theories of what the forebears of pterosaurs might have been, up through a detailed examination of the amazing structure underlying what appear to be simple leather wings and the probable ecological niches each species inhabited and adapted to... to how they walked on the ground and launched themselves into the air. All with great illustrations. Highly recommended.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A feast of the first vertebrate experiment with flight--ornithologists take note!
By Richard D. Norris
Before reading this book I knew almost nothing about pterosaurs but now I see them for the amazing, ecologically diverse creatures they were--an experiment with vertebrate flight that produced all sorts of interesting parallels with birds. I'm a professional paleontologist, so for me the discussion of bones and taxonomy is no barrier. But like many readers, I expect, the most interesting parts of this lovely book lie in the discussions of paleoecology, the controversies in `pterosaurology' and the fuzzy, still emerging vision of an alternate world of flying animals. Witton is a good writer--witty, a bit informal, and an expert with a skill at telling a story well. For me, it is a perfect combination of wit and fact; I can gloss over the bone names and inside-controversy if I want to glean the meat of how the animals worked and what their world was like. His descriptions of these animals as living things are not particularly technical and should be accessible to an general reader. People who know something about birds will likely particularly enjoy this book. But, increasingly as I read each chapter while brushing my teeth or sitting on the pot, I have taken to absorbing it all. Indeed, I have taken to comparing this book very favorably to other works of this kind, such as Long's "The Rise of Fishes" (much more taxonomic than it should be) and similar books that survey major groups. Three cheers for Mark Witton!
Witton is also a good illustrator, and has put flesh, color, and speculative reality on his pterosaurs. The book is illustrated with lots of paintings, some of which are a bit more artistic than fully informative, but which give you a sense (in an `informed-speculation' way) of what these animals were like as living things. He also has lovely photographs of the actual specimens and anatomical drawings of the skeletons and other features of each group of pterosaurs. It is handy to have the photographs in this book since they help me appreciate how scrappy a lot of the fossil material actually is. That realization, in turn, tempers one's acceptance of the fully fleshed-out paintings and skeletal drawings.
Still, there is enough there (amazingly, for such delicate creatures) that we gain a sense for just how diverse and incredible pterosaurs were as a group. There were flamingo-like pterosaurs, nightjar-like pterosaurs, and albatross-like pterosaurs. There were pterosaurs with huge, likely brightly colored crests, and ones with scimitar-wings and broad-rounded wings. The emerging image is of a group with huge diversity that has explored many of the same alleyways as birds. At the same time, pterosaurs were also not just an early try at being birds, since they seem to have many unique features of their ecology. Pterosaurs went in for a huge variety of head crests--massive, elaborate affairs that provided an alternative way to impress mates compared to peacock's tails. Their mouths were crammed with baskets of teeth--a distinctly un-bird-like approach to life. Further, many pterosaurs had dinky tails that seemingly must have given them oddly unbalanced bodies considering their long necks and big heads. Just how did these animals fly without nose-diving into the ground? It is unfortunate that we have just a few scraps of them in the fossil record, but what a record it is turning out to be! Glorious diversity, most wonderful!
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