Do Pterosaurs Still have Pycnofibres?

[Faelrin]

@suspsy Thanks for sharing their takes about this.

Quite frankly I was pretty shocked about the article that popped up in my feed making this claim. Glad to see other paleontologists feedback on this, as well as the folks here.

I have to agree with @Sim this does sound a bit unprofessional, at least in the one person's case if I'm understanding all of this correctly.

Also in regards to the Mattel pterosaurs at least the Quetzalcoatlus is covered in pycnofibers, and give or take the Dimorphodon (although it is based on its film appearance, theropod like head and all). Why the other non film ones don't is my guess. Even the Tapejara which largely seems based off the design used in the game Ark (which I think has them), lacks them.

[ITdactyl]

It seems the authors of the feathered anurognathid paper (Yang et al.) already published a reply to Unwin and Martill's "no protofeathers" take.*

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344413424_Reply_to_No_protofeathers_on_pterosaurs

In their comment, Unwin and Martill assert that the branched integumentary structures that we identified are not feathers or even pycnofibres. They make five arguments in favour of their point of view: (1) superposition or decomposition of composite fibre-like structures or aktinofibrils yields branched structures similar to those in the anurognathids; (2) the anatomy and anatomical distri-bution of the anurognathid integumentary structures are consistent with aktinofibrils, but not pycnofibres; (3) evidence for keratin and melanosomes is not indicative of pycnofibres but rather reflects con-tamination from epidermal tissue; (4) the branching we reported is not consistent with exclusively monofilamentous coverings in other anurognathids; and (5) homology of the branched integumen-tary structures with feathers cannot be demonstrated conclusively owing to the simple morphology of the former. We refute all five of  their arguments

don't have access to the full paper though. I really want to read the rebuttal for points #4 & 5.

*this has apparently been shared by stargatedalek a few posts back. The link above has the preview page (page 1) with the rebuttal for points 1-3.

[suspsy]

David Unwin is a recognized authority on pterosaurs, he can hardly be described as a joker. And David Martill is well known personally by some of the members and admins on this forum. I would trust them rather than the claims of Communist science

"Anything from China=Communist" has to be the one of the most uniquely American backwards things I've ever read on this forum.

I can think of few more effective methods for utterly demolishing one's own argument. It's as bad as dismissing a study because the author happened to be a different gender or non-white.

Oh, and it should also be pointed out that Unwin/Martill weren't even straightforward with the artist they commissioned:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MeganJPalaeo/status/1310869623466872834?fbclid=IwAR1lTNmcPjOYvyrb7LGKWkUEPQ-VsT51udT3tkWvTnPPpiMDsMYFqslEsJY

[Dinoguy2]

David Unwin is a recognized authority on pterosaurs, he can hardly be described as a joker. And David Martill is well known personally by some of the members and admins on this forum. I would trust them rather than the claims of Communist science

"Anything from China=Communist" has to be the one of the most uniquely American backwards things I've ever read on this forum.

I can think of few more effective methods for utterly demolishing one's own argument. It's as bad as dismissing a study because the author happened to be a different gender or non-white.

Oh, and it should also be pointed out that Unwin/Martill weren't even straightforward with the artist they commissioned:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MeganJPalaeo/status/1310869623466872834?fbclid=IwAR1lTNmcPjOYvyrb7LGKWkUEPQ-VsT51udT3tkWvTnPPpiMDsMYFqslEsJY

I didn't realize Goldfuss or Tischlinger were communists. Oh, those wacky Germans and all their fake fossils...
(For those who may not know what I'm referring to, pycnofibers were found on German pterosaurs as early as the 1820s and have been found on Rhamphorhynchus, Pterodactylus, Scaphognathus, and Anurognathus from Bavaria, not to mention Sordes from central Eurasia. Fuzzy pterosaurs are far from being a mostly Chinese thing the way the feathered dinosaur fossils are. In fact I'm pretty sure there are still more fuzzy pterosaur specimens known from outside China than from China itself).

I've always gotten the feeling that there is some kind of weird rivalry between these British ptero workers and everybody else. Like they seem to go out of their way to routinely not only go against the conclusions of the Brazillian, Chinese, and Germans, but totally ignore them to the point that they are currently using completely separate, mutually exclusive classification systems and even genus names (for Anhanguerids... or Ornithocheirids if you're British). Isn't it Unwin/Martill who also reject the idea that pterosaurs are even archosaurs, or is that Bennett?

Note that bald pterosaurs are not impossible. It's entirely plausible such specialized creatures had something ultra weird going on with their skin that causes it to fray into fibers when it decays. But the weight of the evidence is currently against this idea, which is why Unwin and Martill haven't successfully gotten it published, and why they had to present their conclusion in a press release for a basically unrelated paper.

[TethysaurusUK]

Martill was telling me about the backlash he's had from it. Great stuff. Haha

[HD-man]

"In this episode, Alan Feduccia's "Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology" (no, we don't get the title either), painting sauropods, reminiscing on Dinosaurs Past and Present (again). Monsters of the Deep  and cryptozoology hoaxes. And finally, what we've all been waiting for: naked pterosaurs!": http://tetzoo.com/podcast/2020/10/22/episode-78-romancing-the-past-and-present

[Dinoguy2]

"In this episode, Alan Feduccia's "Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology" (no, we don't get the title either), painting sauropods, reminiscing on Dinosaurs Past and Present (again). Monsters of the Deep  and cryptozoology hoaxes. And finally, what we've all been waiting for: naked pterosaurs!": http://tetzoo.com/podcast/2020/10/22/episode-78-romancing-the-past-and-present

Interesting that Darren implies at least Unwin is trying to pull a Horner here. Play devil's advocate against a widely-assumed hypothesis as a way to test something usually taken for granted. Hopefully unlike Horner, they'll pull back once the hypothesis has been satisfactorily re-tested. I expect a new wave of published papers looking at the nature of pycnofiber taphonomy in the wake of this, so maybe their gadfly approach is a good thing.