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One thing that is becoming clearer is the relationship between pterosaurs, dinosaurs and birds. "To make a very, very long story short, pterosaurs are regarded as brothers and sisters of dinosaurs," Kellner explained. "That means they have a shared common ancestor, but each one went along a different evolutionary line-one stayed on the ground and the other learned how to fly." Regarding birds, Kellner said, "Among scientists, there is a sort of a consensus that birds are modified dinosaurs. In other words, some dinosaurs eventually learned how to fly and that is when birds originated. From this picture, you can see that pterosaurs and birds are quite different and are not directly related." Lawrence Witmer, an associate professor of anatomy in Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine who has extensively studied pterosaurs, agrees about the distinctiveness of these various animal groups, but puts greater emphasis on connections across branches of the dino family tree. "Pterosaurs and birds developed flight independently, but they're fairly closely related -- birds are dinosaurs and pterosaurs are close cousins of dinosaurs," Witmer said. "We can compare pterosaurs and birds to test hypotheses on how evolutionarily similar, but still quite distinct, animals adapted to life in the air." Pterosaurs became extinct at around the same time non-avian dinosaurs bit the dust. Kellner and his team think volcanic gases led to the demise of the newly identified pterodactyl, as well as other animals, at the Chinese site. Modern birds, which recent genetic data suggest first emerged 100 million years ago, somehow survived the K/T mass extinction event 65 million years ago and have been with us ever since. The mini pterodactyl, however, "opens a new chapter in the evolutionary history of flying creatures," Kellner said.
Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal |
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