A New Crested Pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Spain: The First European Tapejarid (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea)

Leon Claessens,José J Moratalla,Jesús Marugán-Lobón,Angela D Buscalioni,Bernard Gomez,Romain Vullo,Alexander W A Kellner,Montserrat De La Fuente

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038900

Abstract

BackgroundThe Tapejaridae is a group of unusual toothless pterosaurs characterized by bizarre cranial crests. From a paleoecological point of view, frugivorous feeding habits have often been suggested for one of its included clades, the Tapejarinae. So far, the presence of these intriguing flying reptiles has been unambiguously documented from Early Cretaceous sites in China and Brazil, where pterosaur fossils are less rare and fragmentary than in similarly-aged European strata.Methodology/Principal Findings Europejara olcadesorum gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by a unique combination of characters including an unusual caudally recurved dentary crest. It represents the oldest known member of Tapejaridae and the oldest known toothless pterosaur. The new taxon documents the earliest stage of the acquisition of this anatomical feature during the evolutionary history of the Pterodactyloidea. This innovation may have been linked to the development of new feeding strategies.Conclusion/SignificanceThe discovery of Europejara in the Barremian of the Iberian Peninsula reveals an earlier and broader global distribution of tapejarids, suggesting a Eurasian origin of this group. It adds to the poorly known pterosaur fauna of the Las Hoyas locality and contributes to a better understanding of the paleoecology of this Konservat-Lagerstätte. Finally, the significance of a probable contribution of tapejarine tapejarids to the early angiosperm dispersal is discussed.

Highlights

In the Early Cretaceous (145–99 million years ago), a peak occurred in the morphological disparity of Pterosauria, suggesting that new ecological niches were exploited [1,2,3,4]
The presence of a tapejarid in the Barremian of Spain stresses that the distribution of this group was scattered throughout the Gondwanan and Laurasian landmasses bounded by the Tethyan Ocean, from Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and China (Figure 7)
Europejara is definitively a tapejarid, the information provided by the fossil to resolve its phylogenetic affinities is partially incomplete

Summary

Introduction

In the Early Cretaceous (145–99 million years ago), a peak occurred in the morphological disparity of Pterosauria, suggesting that new ecological niches were exploited [1,2,3,4]. The Tapejaridae [5,6] is one of the groups that have appeared during this period and that have acquired these important ecomorphological innovations This clade of pterodactyloids is represented by peculiar forms, which are subdivided into two groups: the longfaced and large Thalassodrominae and the short-faced and smaller Tapejarinae [6,7]. It has been interpreted that the acquisition of a suite of ecomorphological novelties was key to develop the behavior and feeding strategies (i.e., frugivory) that helped tapejarines exploit unexplored ecological niches Due to their short skull with a particular downturned rostrum and unusually shaped toothless beak, tapejarines have most consistently been suggested to have been seed and/or fruit eaters [9,11,12]. The presence of these intriguing flying reptiles has been unambiguously documented from Early Cretaceous sites in China and Brazil, where pterosaur fossils are less rare and fragmentary than in -aged European strata

Methods

Results

Conclusion