Which pterosaurs were contemporary with Tyrannosaurus rex?

[cherry2000]

Hi, I am helping my daughter with a school project, for this I would like to find out which pterosaurs lived at the same time and place as Tyrannosaurus rex, also interestd in achaic bird species that were already around.

Can ayone help with this?

thanks

[Flaffy]

Pterosaur:
Quetzalcoatlus (Azhdarchidae) spp.

Named birds:
Brodavis
Potamornis
Avisaurus

Unnamed birds:
Unnamed enantiornithine B
Unnamed hesperornithiform A
Unnamed ornithurine B
Unnamed ornithurine C
Unnamed ornithurine D

[deanm]

There are also some unassigned fragmentary remains. They are small pieces of bone that are pterosaur in nature but they cannot be assigned to a specific taxon - whether known to science or not because they are so fragmentary in nature. From what I recall they were found in Alberta, Canada and some in Europe.

Maybe one of the other people on the forum with this university access can dig up the reference OR maybe someone else has the details.

[stargatedalek]

Don't forget that even though its never been found alongside them, the range of Tyrannosaurus would have included many of the coastal pterosaurs of North America's inland sea.

[Halichoeres]

All the inland sea stuff drops out of the fossil record at the beginning of the Campanian, though. After that there's a lot of indeterminate pterosaur fragments and a trackway in Utah. The closest thing is Navajodactylus at the end of the Campanian.

To original poster: I guess it depends on how close in time is close enough. Pteranodon is "only" about 20 million years older than Tyrannosaurus, so there might have been animals around that were reasonably closely related. There were certainly other pterosaurs, but the fossil deposits we have from the time when T rex and Triceratops lived isn't very good for preserving small pterosaurs, so only the big ones like Quetzalcoatlus are known.

[Dinoguy2]

All the inland sea stuff drops out of the fossil record at the beginning of the Campanian, though. After that there's a lot of indeterminate pterosaur fragments and a trackway in Utah. The closest thing is Navajodactylus at the end of the Campanian.

To original poster: I guess it depends on how close in time is close enough. Pteranodon is "only" about 20 million years older than Tyrannosaurus, so there might have been animals around that were reasonably closely related. There were certainly other pterosaurs, but the fossil deposits we have from the time when T rex and Triceratops lived isn't very good for preserving small pterosaurs, so only the big ones like Quetzalcoatlus are known.

Even if pteranodontids were able to survive the regression of the inland sea, after 20 million years they wouldn't look anything like Pteranodon anymore. Those crests and possibly even the beaks are display structures and evolve fast. Heck, Pteranodon looked so different only 1 million years earlier that some people place it in a separate genus (Geosternbergia)!

[stargatedalek]

I hadn't realized Tyrannosaurus had such a "limited" range, 68-66 MYA, for some silly reason I expected it to have been present much earlier too.

[Dinoguy2]

I hadn't realized Tyrannosaurus had such a "limited" range, 68-66 MYA, for some silly reason I expected it to have been present much earlier too.

That's actually a long range for a dinosaur species! Looking at formations with much better stratigraphic resolution, most species last for around a million years or less before becoming extinct or evolving to the point they get classified as something different. It's possible that in the future some of the older 68 million year old T. rex fossils will be assigned to new species.

[suspsy]

I hadn't realized Tyrannosaurus had such a "limited" range, 68-66 MYA, for some silly reason I expected it to have been present much earlier too.

It's still vastly longer than we humans have been around! Indeed, I find it funny to imagine the possibility that Sue, Scotty, Rexy (apparently that's the nickname for AMNH 5027 now), Wankel, Bucky, Samson, Jane, etc, were as chronologically distant from one another as William the Conqueror, Henry V, Elizabeth I, Victoria, George V, Elizabeth II, and little Prince George. What's a few hundred years spread over two million?

[Dinoguy2]

I hadn't realized Tyrannosaurus had such a "limited" range, 68-66 MYA, for some silly reason I expected it to have been present much earlier too.

It's still vastly longer than we humans have been around! Indeed, I find it funny to imagine the possibility that Sue, Scotty, Rexy (apparently that's the nickname for AMNH 5027 now), Wankel, Bucky, Samson, Jane, etc, were as chronologically distant from one another as William the Conqueror, Henry V, Elizabeth I, Victoria, George V, Elizabeth II, and little Prince George. What's a few hundred years spread over two million?

All those people lived within a thousand years of each other, so in the Cretaceous fossil record that difference in time might not even be detectable! At least a few of those specimens might be as distant from each other as Elizabeth II, Plato, and Mitochondrial Eve!

(Keeping in mind that the Hell Creek time spanned around 800k years, if you divide it into 3rds for upper-middle-lower, any specimens from the upper Hell Creek would still span a time period of over 200k years).