Satsuma's Winged Dragon

[ITdactyl]

https://www.kts-tv.co.jp/news/7675/

The Japanese are calling it "Satsuma Tsubasa  Ryu" - that is, Satsuma winged dragon or simply the Satsuma Pterosaur.

The 7cm fossil of a leg bone was discovered in November 2020 on the Ogushi coast of Shishi Island, Nagashima Town. It was found by fossil hunter Satoshi Utsonomiya and is the first pterosaur fossil from the Kagoshima Prefecture of Japan.  The fossil is currently being studied at the Kagoshima Prefectural Museum and has yet to be classified - though they seem to have skewed towards an ornithocheirid classification.




The figure was produced for the fossil discovery press conference held today. We don't know if and when the figure will hit the collector's market, but I'm sure we'll hear more in the coming days.

*These images were shared by the Kaiyodo official facebook page.
**The Japanese word for pterosaur is "Yokuryuu"; using "Tsubasa Ryuu" is just for dramatic effect because they directly translate into the same thing - winged dragon.

[Halichoeres]

That's a really cool model. I believe that's Goro Furuta, who made some of the models for the Dinotales line, like Sinemys for example. It would be nice to see some good prehistorics from Kaiyodo--they've had a pretty boring few years.

[Flaffy]

Oh wow! Hopefully this means Kaiyodo will finally dip their toes into interesting prehistorics again.

[suspsy]

Looks very demonic.

[ITdactyl]

Nice catch @Halichoeres , that is indeed Furuta-san. He was credited as the sculptor of the piece in the report, but my attention was on the figure itself and forgot to credit him in the post. My bad. Hopefully Kaiyodo includes the figure in an upcoming lineup.



As for the look, I think it fits well with the rest of Furuta-san's recent sculptures (with the hyper-realistic details and poses - consider his angry Archaeopteryx and Pterodaustro above). It reminds me of an angry pelican though.

This article has pictures of the original fossils:
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASP8V6DKLP8TTLTB008.html?fbclid=IwAR1N5Mm7T4djMmgSZeP_K1Qq41AlARo-VmtwA11ZZ9S8srSnVTqz3jqgy5k

[Psittacoraptor]

It looks like a demonic toothed pelican.