To emphasise the point of my other post on this exceptional Pterodactylus, here is another specimen from the Solnhofen Museum. This one may not look as nice as the other, but the bones are preserved closer to an original 3D state. More importantly, although you can’t see it here, numerous soft tissue parts are preserved. An anterior crest, and occipital ‘cone’, a partial beak and claws and skin around the feet.
So while this little critter may not have the obvious aesthetic appeal of the last one, this is probably the more important and significant specimen scientifically.
Will you be referring to something as doubleplusungood next?
Awesome, never seen this one before. Has the anterior crest (of this specimen or any others) been described anywhere? I know one or two papers dealing with the occipital cone but don’t have anything about an anterior, Germanodactylus style crest.
The anterior crest here is all soft tissue, there no bony cristae as in Germanodactylus cristatur or Dsungaripterus etc. And all of this is described in Frey et al 2003 which I *think* this on Chirs Bennett’s archive as a PDF.