A New View of Pterosaur Feeding Habits

Liza Gross

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050217

Abstract

A New View of Pterosaur Feeding Habits

Highlights

Few things capture a child’s imagination like the age of dinosaurs, and it’s no wonder
The dinosaur seems an improbable beast, yet the fossil record tells us that vegetarian sauropods longer than a football field once lumbered alongside tractor-trailer–sized predatory carnosaurs
Physical and theoretical models show that pterosaurs (Thalassodromeus, right) could not meet the energy requirements of skimming, a rare feeding strategy practiced habitually by just a few extant Rynchops species. (Image: Mark Witton) dynamic model incorporating drag forces that would cause energy loss as the pterosaur or bird worked against gravity to displace water with its jaw

Summary

Introduction

Few things capture a child’s imagination like the age of dinosaurs, and it’s no wonder. Such studies have suggested that some pterosaurs may have fed like modernday “skimmers,” a rarified group of shorebirds, belonging to the genera Rynchops, that fly along the surface of still bodies of water scooping up small fish and crustaceans with their submerged lower jaw. The fossilized jaws of putative pterosaur skimmers bear features that undercut this hypothesis, including pointed jaw tips that likely couldn’t deflect water, and reduce energy costs, the way the blunted jaw tips of Rynchops presumably do.

Results

Conclusion