People, meet your new "Monkeydactyl": Kunpengopterus!

[ITdactyl]

Kunpengopterus isn't a new find (The type species was named in 2010), but a fossil showing an opposable thumb was found to be a new species and named this year.

The press now calls it "monkeydactyl", for better or worse. Well, nicknames sell.
Link to the paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982221003699?dgcid=author

Some pop news takes:
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-jurassic-monkeydactyl-is-the-earliest-example-of-opposed-thumbs/
https://aw-journal.com/fossils-flying-reptile-from-60-million-years-ago-has-the-oldest-true-opposed-thumb/

Art highlighting the thumb by Chuang Zhao.

[Halichoeres]

Wouldn't have predicted this feature! Very cool finding, and what a great painting too.

I wonder if there were lots of arboreal pterosaurs with good grips like this, but just never fossilized because tree dwellers so rarely get the chance to fossilize.

[Libraraptor]

This is an interesting discovery!

[Halichoeres]

On further reading, I see that Kunpengopterus was an established genus, but this is a new species: K. antipollicatus ('opposite thumbed').

Also, can I say: I'm happy to see people posting in this part of the forum again. It was really dead for a while.

[Faelrin]

I'm glad to see something like this discovered. I was recently thinking up some designs for dragons or wyverns and wondered if something like this would be a feasible feature to have (despite being fantasy beasts and all).

Surprisingly (or not perhaps) this was actually a genus I wasn't familiar with. Granted I'm way less versed in pterosaurs as it is (I should correct that sometime this year, ditto with marine reptiles). The painting is truly beautiful, and as typical, I only hope some day there will be figures of these beauties. CollectA, PNSO, anyone please.

[ITdactyl]

Thanks for the save @Halichoeres . Got too excited and didn't notice there were 2 species to this Genus. 'Editing the first post with corrections.

[Shonisaurus]

I really like this new finding, I hope that in the future maybe next year Collecta will be encouraged to make a beauty of figure like that, at least equal to or better than the one shown in the illustration. I absolutely love that monkeydactyl.

[Sim]

This is an amazing discovery!   The illustration by Chuang Zhao is beautiful.  I like how they restored the tail anatomy.  However I have two issues with the illustration.  First, the nostril should probably be positioned at the front of the fenestra, not in the middle of it.  Second, Kunpengopterus antipollicatus is not known to have a head crest and I doubt it had one based on the known remains.  I was disappointed to see that all Kunpengopterus antipollicatus restorations give it a head crest... except the one below which is nice but represents an albino individual for some reason.

  (Image source)

I would love to see an artist restore Kunpengopterus antipollicatus as a normal individual without a head crest!  It's known that some wukongopetids didn't have a head crest, and when there isn't a head crest the attention is drawn to an interesting feature of these animals: their very long snouts!


I wasn't able to load the news pages in the first post and the paper is paywalled, so here are some links:

1. A nice website on new species that shows photos of two Kunpengopterus antipollicatus specimens: http://novataxa.blogspot.com/2021/04/kunpengopterus-antipollicatus.html

2. A news article that has a great photo of the Kunpengopterus antipollicatus holotype, complete (the photo of it in the previous link cuts off some of the tail): http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/kunpengopterus-antipollicatus-09548.html


Does anyone know how big Kunpengopterus antipollicatus got?  Anyone who's read the paper?  @Halichoeres perhaps?

[Libraraptor]

Just came back to this threat thanks to Sims latest post and look at that fossil again. Don´t want to be a killjoy, but couldn´t it simply be that this finger twisted during the carcass drying out or its fossilization? Just asking, at the risk of seeming stupid.

[Sim]

Based on photos with a scale bar that I've found, I've estimated the wingspan of the K. antipollicatus holotype to be roughly 62cm, and the other specimen to be around half the size of the holotype.  Something not mentioned so far is that the second specimen of K. antipollicatus is Mrs T, a female individual with two eggs.  Mrs T was originally thought to be a specimen of Darwinopterus, later reclassified as a specimen of Kunpengopterus, and in the paper naming Kunpengopterus antipollicatus it was classified as a specimen of this new species.  For some reason on Wikipedia the information about the Mrs T specimen is still on the Darwinopterus page even though it says it has been reclassified as a Kunpengopterus.


@Libraraptor: Both hands of the holotype of K. antipollicatus show the opposed thumb and the bones don't look like they've been moved around to me.

Wouldn't have predicted this feature! Very cool finding, and what a great painting too.

I wonder if there were lots of arboreal pterosaurs with good grips like this, but just never fossilized because tree dwellers so rarely get the chance to fossilize.

@Halichoeres: Kunpengopterus antipollicatus is from the Tiaojishan Formation, a formation that has yielded most likely arboreal scansoriopterygids and many pterosaurs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiaojishan_Formation  I haven't looked much into which of these animals might have had opposed thumbs, but a summary of the paper says:

Principal-coordinate analyses suggest an arboreal lifestyle for the new species but not for other closely related species from the same locality, implying a possible case of ecological niche partitioning.

So it seems other wukongopterids from the environment of K. antipollicatus were not specialised for living in trees.  Although looking at a specimen of Kunpengopterus sinensis on Wikipedia, it looks like it might have had an opposed thumb too.  Darwinopterus modularis appears to not have an opposed thumb though.  This doesn't really answer your question about whether there was lots of arboreal pterosaurs with an opposed thumb but it seemed related enough to share.