Morphometric assessment of pterosaur jaw disparity

Royal Society Open Science
Charlie A NavarroThomas L Stubbs

Abstract

Pterosaurs were a successful group of Mesozoic flying reptiles. They were the first vertebrate group to achieve powered flight and varied enormously in morphology and ecology, occupying a variety of niches and developing specialized feeding strategies. Ecomorphological principles suggest this variation should be reflected by great morphological diversity in the lower jaw, given that the mandible served as the primary apparatus for prey acquisition. Here we present the first study of mandibular shape disparity in pterosaurs and aim to characterize major aspects of variation. We use a combination of geometric morphometric approaches, incorporating both outline analysis using elliptical Fourier analysis and semi-landmark approaches. Our results show that morphological convergence is prevalent and many pterosaurs, belonging to diverse dietary groups and subclades, overlap in morphospace and possessed relatively simple 'rod-shaped' jaws. There is no clear trend of size distributions in pterosaur mandibular morphospace, and larger forms are widely distributed. Additionally, there is limited functional signal within pterosaur lower jaw morphospace. Instead, the development of a large anterior ventral crest represents the major compone...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 17, 2019·PeerJ·Martin QvarnströmGrzegorz Niedźwiedzki
Jul 10, 2021·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Case Vincent Miller, Michael Pittman

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCA
MDA

Software Mentioned

MDA M atlab ® package
Procrustes
vegan
R
R package Momocs
EFA
R package geomorph
PAST
R package ade4
tps R elw

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