Do Pterosaurs Still have Pycnofibres?

[Loon]

Did I miss something? Apparently, there's a paper out that says they didn't have Pycnofibres, or am I nuts?

Update: well, it seems to either have been misreported or just a bad paper?

[Piltdown 龍]

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/pterosaur-pycnofibers-08896.html

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! 

[Loon]

No pycnofibres.   

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/pterosaur-pycnofibers-08896.html

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! 

Yep, that's what I read. Not particularly helpful.

[Piltdown 龍]

Original paper is paywalled unfortunately 

[Loon]

Original paper is paywalled unfortunately 

Yeah, I know. Hopefully someone who actually read it replies to this.

[Jose S.M.]

I saw some Twitter debate some days ago about this and mostly people where saying the press report was terribly misleading and I'm not sure if I recall correctly but also it was told the paper itself was too.

[ceratopsian]

There was quite a bit of discussion about the two authors on Facebook too.  I guess we wait and see what transpires.

I saw some Twitter debate some days ago about this and mostly people where saying the press report was terribly misleading and I'm not sure if I recall correctly but also it was told the paper itself was too.

[stargatedalek]

This claim is made by a couple of jokers who were essentially laughed out of the 2019 SVP conference. Multiple organizations have refused to publish their nonsense paper and a rebuttal already exists. There is no reason to "wait and see", because frankly their work will hopefully never be published by any serious organization.

They've been launching an all out assault through shady click-bait headlines for the better part of at least the last month. They use deliberately misleading and sensationalized language like "refuting the claim pterosaurs had protofeathers" in order to stir public opinion and fuel disdain for real science. Absolutely unprofessional and frankly despicable tactics. Their intention is to spread this nonsense misinformation as far as possible into the general public. As much as I want to say "let's be better and not give them the time of day"; they've already gathered enough attention that that isn't good enough anymore. This nonsense needs to be talked about, and warrants thorough and harsh rebuking. This isn't a kid or a movie director not knowing something and spreading misinformation, these people are acting in disrespect for established evidence fully aware the evidence is legitimate, and are attempting to speak from a position of prestige and seniority despite their work being rightly refused publication.

Pycnofibres were purported on pterosaurs almost 190 years ago (named in 2009 though). And have been found on numerous specimens since, proven and accepted conclusively since Sordes was described in 1971. There is no debate, pterosaurs had pycnofibres*. They claim when questioned that they are only attempting to refute the 2018 paper (Zixiao Yang et al) describing the newly discovered evidence of branching pycnofibres, but their own writing attempts to use the vague premise that "that paper bad" means all pycnofibres are a fraudulent claim.

The rebuttal:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-01309-8

*A separate, good faith, debate about whether pycnofibres are truly distinct from feathers or other dinosaur integuments is another topic. A debate possible because the 2018 paper describing branching pycnofibres is legitimate.

[Piltdown 龍]

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. The paper was published by Nature Ecology and
Evolution, hardly a tabloid paper.

*thinks of buying some fuzzless pterosaur toys to celebrate*    A Mattelsaur maybe. 

[Halichoeres]

Nowhere in the paper do Unwin and Martill claim that pterosaurs didn't have pycnofibers. They only claim that the branched, featherlike ones reported in an anurognathid last year are more likely to be decayed actinofibrils. The presence of pycnofibers on the body is not in dispute by any of the authors concerned. Reporting has badly misinterpreted that. If anybody wants the pdf, pm me your email address.

[stargatedalek]

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

Well then he's abusing that authority and trying to push nonsense.

Spoiler

Note the source of the image, not a random piece of art snagged off the internet but intended to represent the claims.

[close]

The CCP is not communist, they are an authoritarian dictatorship with highly regulated but still decidedly capitalist economic policies. Authoritarian and fascist regimes have been stealing leftist terms to make themselves look legitimate for centuries. China is no more communist than North Korea is a "democratic republic".

Their economic policies should be entirely irrelevant to the state of their sciences anyway.

To discount papers originating from China as inherently fake is already in incredibly poor taste, but the evidence for pycnofibres dates back almost two centuries and steams from nations all around the world. Allowing that to be undermined under the guise of "China bad" is a bad faith argument misrepresenting the science.

I would trust centuries old science and dozens of well documented fossils over a sudden media flurry of nonsense.

[Libraraptor]

Nowhere in the paper do Unwin and Martill claim that pterosaurs didn't have pycnofibers. They only claim that the branched, featherlike ones reported in an anurognathid last year are more likely to be decayed actinofibrils. The presence of pycnofibers on the body is not in dispute by any of the authors concerned. Reporting has badly misinterpreted that. If anybody wants the pdf, pm me your email address.

Thank you very much Tim for clearing this up quickly and clearly.  Sordes pilosus and co. breath a sign of relief

[Sim]

Apparently the authors do think pterosaurs were covered in smooth skin: http://dinosaurmailinglist.cmnh.org/2020Oct/msg00012.html

Personally, I don't believe pterosaurs lacked pycnofibers and I don't like the way the authors are claiming it's a truth that they did.  Seems rather unprofessional to me.

[Sim]

In addition to my previous post there's also this: http://dml.cmnh.org/2020Sep/msg00196.html

A relevant quote from Mickey Mortimer on that page:

And indeed, arguing pterosaurs were naked when they show the same kind of covering in Jehol deposits that coelurosaurs do (minus the big remiges and retrices) is just as silly as BANDit attempts to discredit dinosaur feathers.  Unless all the coelurosaurs' and birds' bodies were just covered in actinofibrils...

(Actinofibrils are the structural fibers in pterosaur wings.)

[Loon]

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.

[Halichoeres]

Apparently the authors do think pterosaurs were covered in smooth skin: http://dinosaurmailinglist.cmnh.org/2020Oct/msg00012.html

Personally, I don't believe pterosaurs lacked pycnofibers and I don't like the way the authors are claiming it's a truth that they did.  Seems rather unprofessional to me.

That's an interesting wrinkle. I wasn't aware of the discussions external to this Nature E&E editorial by Unwin and Martill, my plain reading of which made them sound more circumspect. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far they haven't furnished it as far as I can tell. It strikes me as facially unparsimonious to conclude that all the specimens of Scaphognathus, Sordes, and Jeholopterus with filament impressions are mere artifacts of actinofibril degradation.

[suspsy]

Darren Naish has been tearing these two attention seekers a new one on TetZoo. What they've done is totally unprofessional.

[Loon]

Darren Naish has been tearing these two attention seekers a new one on TetZoo. What they've done is totally unprofessional.

Kind of a shame. Apparently Martill is quite a famous pterosaur researcher, weird to see someone like that put out such a bizarre claim. I guess even supposedly good researchers have bad ideas from time to time. *cough* Jack Horner *cough*

[suspsy]

These are some quotes from Darren Naish:

The conference talk which Dave Unwin gave on this research was.... less than convincing, and he was given a hard time in the Q&A. It didn't take account of taphonomic, molecular, anatomical and palaeoclimatological data relevant to this issue.

I'm getting the indication through correspondence (I know both authors personally) that one of the relevant authors has publicly denied any indication that pterosaurs were naked-skinned, while the other is actively promoting it, and aims to do so at a big international palaeontology-themed conference happening later this year (it has the letters P and V and S in its name). Their message to the press and public, and other researchers, may be a bit confused, and it explains why their press release both pushes the idea of naked-skinned pterosaurs but also does not....

And from Mark Witton:

I don't really understand myself. What I know, and seems confirmed by what Darren has said on Twitter, is that at SVPCA last year Unwin and Martill proposed that pterosaur fuzz - as in, _all_ pterosaur fuzz - was decayed skin fibres, and that they were in fact naked skinned. That's likely where the seed of this came from. It reportedly got a rough ride at SVPCA and I expect, if it was included in their paper, would not have passed peer review. But now, in prepping PR for their 'pterosaurs don't have branched feathers' story, they seem to have mixed in their 'pterosaurs were naked' stuff too, despite it having no bearing on their paper. I have no idea why they've conflated a perfectly fine pterosaur news piece about legitimate science with a controversial and likely incorrect pet theory. It's a weird and disingenuous thing for two senior academics to do, in my opinion.

I don't like this at all. We chastise folks like [David] Peters and [Brian J.] Ford for the exact same thing - peddling pet theories to the public by actively avoiding peer review. I'm not accusing the person behind this of Petersian levels of crankery, but it's bad form.

So yeah, don't anyone go praising Mattel and Papo pterosaurs for suddenly being accurate!

[Loon]

Those quotes are pretty damning.

So yeah, don't anyone go praising Mattel and Papo pterosaurs for suddenly being accurate!

Unfortunately, there are many people who seem to lack the ability to be critical.