Pterosaurs are pterosaurs

Recently a paper was published on a new pterosaur from the Dallas region of Texas (Myers, 2010). While an interesting find, I suggest you find the paper to read about it, I think the paper speaks for itself I wanted to blog about something else. I have read two different public articles about the paper and they both get it wrong.

The first one (found here) is a blog post from Scientific Blogging. Now I have stated in the past that I do enjoy the blogs on Scientific Blogging (see here, here, here, and here) but in this case they said something that made slap my own face.

The rare pterosaur — literally a winged lizard — is also one of the youngest members in the world of the family Ornithocheiridae, and only the second ornithocheirid ever documented in North America.

[emphasis mine]

Come on this is a scientific blog you are supposed to get this right. Lizards fall within the order Squamata and are more specifically within the Suborder of Lacertilia. While they are closely related to lizards, at least more so than they are to mammals, pterosaurs are not lizards. Pterosaurs are an order within the Archosaurs which actually puts them more closely related to crocodiles and dinosaurs than lizards.

So if a scientific blog can't get it right what chance do the nonscientific sources have? This next write up is from Fox News and was sent to me by my father. You don't have to get past the headline to see what is wrong with this article:

New Toothy, Flying Dino Discovered in Texas

Yes they call them dinosaurs and it gets better:

Evidence of these flying creatures has been rare in North America -- the newly identified Aetodactylus halli is only the second such dinosaur ever documented here, although toothed pterosaurs like it were common at the time elsewhere in the world.

Argh, come on people. While yes both dinosaurs and pterosaurs are members of Ornithodira they differ from there in many ways, not going to go in depth here because it would take to long, and some scientists say they shouldn't even be related this far down. This particular paragraph also makes it seem that pterosaurs, or worse yet dinosaurs, are rare in North America. If you read the actual paper neither one of those statements are what is argued in fact it they are just arguing that the ornithocheirid pterosaurs are rare in North America, in fact this is the second one of that clade found in North America. If they are arguing that dinosaurs are rare in Texas they are also wrong, also see Jacobs (1995).

So what conclusion can we draw from this? Scientists need to make sure that when interviewed we make sure to stress things like pterosaurs are not dinosaurs or lizards. We also need to make sure we do educated the general public when given the chance to point out things like this, because I am sure that most kids could tell you that pterosaurs are not dinosaurs nor are they lizards so we need to make sure we keep stressing this!

Sources

JACOBS, L. 1995. Lone Star Dinosaurs. Texas A& M University Press, College Station, 160 p.

MYERS, T. S. 2010. A new ornithocheirid pterosaur from the upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian-Turonian) Eagle Ford group of Texas. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30(1):280-287.