Tupandactylus specimen preserving a full crest

[ITdactyl]

...or, on a less serious tone, Johnny Bravo born as a pterosaur.

Just look at it!



Link to the paper:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0254789#sec008

News bites:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/stunning-fossil-seized-in-police-raid-reveals-prehistoric-flying-reptiles-secrets
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02283-2

Artists are already having a go with their interpretations of this new crest shape.

Joshua Tedder:
https://twitter.com/JoshuaTedder3/status/1426300240391454721/photo/1

Gabriel Ugueto:
https://twitter.com/SerpenIllus/status/1426576441169305606/photo/1

Julia d'Oliveira:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8_lU_yXoAQXCzM?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

..and yes, I do think such a crest deserves immortality in toy form.

[Faelrin]

I caught wind of this earlier with Gabriel's beautiful artwork of it over on instagram. Such a stunning specimen.

[Gwangi]

Oh wow, look at that. Beautiful specimen!

[ITdactyl]

The paper was just published. I've updated the first post with a link to it (free access) as well as some news write-ups.

[stargatedalek]

It should be pointed out this isn't a known species that is only now known from a full crest, but a new species that has been included in Tupandactylus. The previous reconstructions of other crest shapes are still accurate as they are different species.

[ITdactyl]

Yep. It's actually just a very complete specimen of T.navigans with a forward oriented crest (compared to the backward sloping crest of previously described specimens). It's still separate from T.imperator - though the authors mentioned in the paper a possibility that navigans and imperator might be 2 sexually dimorphic forms of the same species.

[suspsy]

Cool!

[andrewsaurus rex]

wow interesting stuff.  It's long been time for Safari to retire their Tapejara figure, with its totally wrong crest and do a Tupandactylus in its place....they could even just rework the head of the existing figure.  This find gives further impetus.