Nesting the Zittel wing of Rhamphorhynchus in the large pterosaur cladogram
Traditionally
the well-preserved Zittel wing (Fig. 1; Zittel 1882) had been assigned to Rhamphorhynchus gemmingi, of which n74 (TM 6922/6923) is the holotype.
Figure 1. The Zittel wing of Rhamphorhynchus is traced here. It nests not with R. gemmingi specimens, but with R. muensteri specimens. Click to enlarge. Both manual digit 5 and ungual 4.5 are present here along with wonderful shallow chord wing membrane tissue and propatagium.
I wondered if
the wing specimen had enough character traits to nest it in the large pterosaur cladogram. There it nests between the famous ‘dark wing’ specimen (JME Sos 4784, also famous for soft tissue preservation) and the MTM V 2998.33.1 specimen (Fig. 2), both assigned to R. muensteri. The Zittel wing is a little larger than both.
Figure 2. The Zittel wing specimen B St 188 II 8 nests between the ‘dark wing’ JME Sos 4784 specimen and the MTM V 2998.33.1 specimen, both in the Rhamphorhynchus muensteri clade. This is a portion of a larger image.
You might recall
that Elgin, Hone and Frey (2010) dismissed the Zittel wing because it did not fit into their deep chord paradigm, but suffered from ‘shrinkage’. That is bogus thinking. More on pterosaur wings here and here. All known pterosaur specimens preserving wing membranes do so following the Zittel wing pattern. That’s a fact that other workers attempt to dismiss.
References
Elgin RA, Hone DWE and Frey E 2010. The extent of the pterosaur flight membrane. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica in press. doi: 10.4202/app.2009.0145
Goldfuss A 1831. Beiträge zur Kenntnis vershiedener Reptilien der Vorwelt. Nova Acta Academiae Leopoldinae Carolinae, Breslau and Bonn, 15: 61-128
Peters D 2002. A New Model for the Evolution of the Pterosaur Wing – with a twist. – Historical Biology 15: 277–301.
Tischlinger H and Frey E 2002. Ein Rhamphorhynchus (Pterosauria, Reptilia) mit ungewöhnlicher Flughauterhaltung aus dem Solnhofener Plattenkalk. Archaeopteryx, 20, 1-20.
Wellnhofer P 1975a-c. Teil I. Die Rhamphorhynchoidea (Pterosauria) der Oberjura-Plattenkalke Süddeutschlands. Allgemeine Skelettmorphologie. Paleontographica A 148: 1-33. Teil II. Systematische Beschreibung. Paleontographica A 148: 132-186. Teil III. Paläokolgie und Stammesgeschichte. Palaeontographica 149: 1-30.
Zittel KA 1882. Über Flugsaurier aus dem lithographischen Schiefer Bayerns. Palaeontographica 29: 7-80.
Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/nesting-the-zittel-wing-of-rhamphorhynchus-in-the-large-pterosaur-cladogram/
