Re-examination of the purported pterosaur wing metacarpals from the Upper Triassic of England

Abstract

Two small bones from the Upper Triassic of Cromhall Quarry (Gloucestershire, England), which are referred in the literature to pterosaurian wing metacarpals, are compared with wing metacarpals of unequivocal pterosaur specimens from the Upper Triassic of Italy and Greenland as well as those of the Liassic Dimorphodon macronyx from England. The two are morphologically distinct from the unequivocal wing metacarpals. Comparison with the phalanges of drepanosauromorphs suggests that they are probably penultimate phalanges of those bizarre diapsids. Drepanosauromorphs are now known from Cromhall Quarry, but they were not in 1990 when the two presumed wing metacarpals were described. There is no definitive evidence of the presence of pterosaurs in the Triassic of the UK.

Keywords::

• Pterosauria
• Drepanosauromorpha
• wing metacarpal
• penultimate phalanges
• Upper Triassic
• Cromhall Quarry

Acknowledgements

The authors thank G. Muscio of the MFSN, A. Paganoni of the MCSNB, R. Schoch of the SMNS, O. Rauhut of the BSP and S. Chapman of the NHMUK for access to specimens under their care. Thanks also to R. Stecher for the photographs of BNM 14524 and to the archives of the Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali ‘E. Caffi’ – Istituto di Geologia e Paleontologia of Bergamo (Italy) for the photographs of MCSNB 5728. Finally, the authors thank S. Cristopher Bennett, Silvio Renesto and Michael O'Sullivan for reviewing and improving the manuscript and S.C. Bennett for help with the translation of German texts.

Notes

The paper is for the special issue of the Rio Pterosaur Symposium and contains taxonomic information.