Princeton University Press The Field Guide to Pterosaurs

I've always wondered about these long extinct animals and when I saw this book I just had to have it. I would,'t say this is a book you would read just for fun unless your interest lies in this area. Mine does and I enjoyed reading it. It has a lot of information in it explaining how their wings developed lift and how they were able to become airborne by leaping into the air. That doesn't sound so spectacular till you realize the biggest one weighed six-hundred pounds and was as big as a Giraffe. Not as heavy; as large. Still six-hundred pounds is a lot to leap with. If you're into this stuff you'll appreciate the book.

This excellent large-size, hardcover volume clearly presents the distribution, adaptations and life histories of a magnificent array of pterosaurs. It is a valuable addition to my dinosaur library and a great value.

Information is first rate and the illustrations are spectacular.

great

“The Princeton Field Guide” series, aimed at serious hobbyists or professionals in paleontology, is pretty small so far. “The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs” by Gregory S. Paul first came out in 2010 and had a second edition in 2016. “The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals” by Donald Prothero came out in 2017. I reviewed all of these for the Paleontograph. Here I am going to review this year’s book “The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs” by Gregory S. Paul. In the fall “The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles," also by Gregory S. Paul, will come out, and I will probably review that as well.First, something about the author of most of the Field Guides The author Greg Paul is a well-known illustrator of dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals. While he does not have formal training as a paleontologist, he has a very deep and broad grasp of the subject of dinosaurs, and has written many books on paleontological topics going back decades. “Predatory Dinosaurs of the World” (1988) is a classic. “Dinosaurs of the Air” (2002) is a comprehensive review of the dinosaur origin of birds. He also edited “The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs” (2000), which is a collection of “special topics.” Paul is the originator of the “white skeleton embedded in a black silhouette” style of drawing prehistoric animals, which has caught on in a big way.Before the actual review, I will throw out some introductory bits about pterosaurs.Pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the Mesozoic, are the first vertebrates that learned powered flight. They were a very large diverse group, classically divided into two types: rhamphorhynchoids (named for Rhamphorhynchus) and pterodactyloids (named for Pterodactylus). Rhamphorhynchoids lived from the Late Triassic until the Early Cretaceous. They generally were small and had large toothed heads on a short neck. They also had long tails with a rhomboid shaped vane at the end. Pterodactyloids lived from the Middle Jurassic until the Late Cretaceous. The had large heads on long necks, and short tails. Many of them were toothless. Some of the largest pterosaurs (wing spans of ~30 feet) were pterodactyloids.One thing all pterosaurs have in common is that their wings were made from skin stretched from the body to a single elongated fourth finger, which is unique among vertebrates. They are unique in a number of other ways. The most striking is that their heads could be large compared to the rest of their bodies (and sometimes included very large crests), and their arms were usually much longer than their legs. They are so different anatomically from contemporary flyers (birds and bats) that we can only guess how they flew or even walked. However, given that they did fly, it is not surprising that pterosaurs convergent with birds on may features (hollow bones, air sacs, rigid backs and chests, large brains, presumably high energy metabolism, etc.). Popular books on pterosaurs are not as common as those for dinosaurs. Two I have reviewed for the Paleontograph are: “The Pterosaurs” by David Unwin (2005) and “Pterosaurs” by Mark Witton (2013). Both are a little out of date now, but certainly worth looking up.TPFGTP contains 17 chapters, some of which contain up to 9 subchapters. That is a little too much for me to review chapter-by-chapter, other than for me to say the idea clearly is to be as comprehensive as possible. I will just review portions that I found somewhat unique to this book, compared to other popular books on pterosaurs. There is a very good discussion of how pterosaurs stood or walked, which is not obvious, given that their arm bone articulations are constrained, their necks are stiff, and their arms are much longer than their legs. It is likely their elbows pointed out rather than back, in a “push-up” position. This allows the fourth finger to fold behind the hand and point upward (and not, say, tucked into the armpit) and the fingers to point outward, consistent with their tracks. There is also a very good discussion of how wings work. (Not by the Bernoulli effect as is often claimed.) There is also a discussion of how one can distinguish flapping flight vs. soaring based on the proportion of the wings, and how pterosaurs might have used their wing surfaces, tail, and (less likely) head crests, to control flight. There is also the question of how pterosaurs launched from a standing start, specifically did they push off using their arms, legs, or both?A few chapters discuss more speculative areas such as what senses pterosaurs might have used, what kind of sounds they may have made, whether their behavior was complex, whether they would be able to compete against modern birds, etc. One particular question is intriguing, i.e., why do so many pterosaurs have large head crests (longer than their entire body in some cases), when so few birds (like the cassowary) do. Probably because birds can make large display features using only feathers, which are not preserved in fossils.Were pterosaurs were precocial or altricial as hatchlings and, relatedly, did pterosaurs provide parental care? Modern birds vary a lot in being precocial or altricial, but almost all provide some amount of parental care. A number of pterosaur eggs with embryos have been found. In those cases, the wing proportions of the embryos were very similar to that of adults. This implies to most paleontologists that hatchlings could fly right away, and probably did not need any parental care. Paul speculates that there is still room to believe that some hatchling pterosaurs hung around the nests and were fed by their parents.One topic not covered is in the book is the origin of pterosaurs. Pterosaurs and dinosaurs had a common ancestry, and the current best guess is that their common ancestor was close to small Triassic archosaurs called lagerterpids. Pterosaurs appear in the fossil record fully able to fly, so it is not easy to guess what intermediate form they might have had.The second half of the book is a 80 page overview of the groups of pterosaurs with some very good “skeleton in silhouette” reconstructions. These use a standard pose for all pterosaurs, e.g., seen from the side with the wings raised. These can be used to indicate which bones are preserved for which groups. This section also contains life restorations in the same pose. A similar style is found in “The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs.” There is a very nice diagram of the duration of each subgroup of pterosaurs over time.Overall, this is a very thorough and up-to-date book. This book is very well illustrated as well, the main text having an average of one illustration per page. A caveat, though: As would be expected, Paul illustrates his own books. He does four types of illustrations:Ink renderings of the “skeleton in a silhouette”.Ink diagrams comparing pterosaurs to birds, bats, airplanes, etc.3. Pencil restorations of animals in standard poses.4. Painted or color pencil life restorations of the animal in its environment.These are all good, but readers looking for photographs of fossils will not find them here.Another caveat is that Paul’s “review article” style of writing (with references cited in the text) is more suited to professional journals than a semi-popular work, so it can be tough going for a popular audience. However, it is well within my comfort zone as a serious hobbyist.