Talk:Ornithocheirus

Most of this article seems to be written with information from Walking With Dinosaurs (particularly to with it's size). It also fails to mention the "junk basket" nature of this taxon.

It is possible I'm just out of date on these matters. However, if no one speaks up, I'm going to delete most of the text. John.Conway 16:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've attempted to make it a bit more scientific. There is indeed an enormous divide between what through WWD had become the popular notion of this animal and its empirical content.--MWAK (talk) 12:56, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

"Palaeornis", Cimoliornis, Cretornis, Ornithocheirus nomina nuda
Remove Ornithocheirus cliftoni ("Palaeornis"), O. diomedeus (Cimoliornis), O. hlavaci (Cretornis), O. "macrorhinus", and O. "oxyrhinus" from the Ornithocheirus species list because the former three species are nomina dubia and should be relegated to Pterosauria incerate sedis and the latter two species are nomina nuda. Ornithocheirus curtus may turn out to be congeneric with Pterodactylus, as originally named, and O. bunzeli and O. wiendenrothi may be azhdarchids intstead.
 * Um... these species are listed as mis-assigned. Only the two valid species listed by Unwin are listed as valid in the taxobox. Dinoguy2 02:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Is Ornithocheirus a dinosaur? 96.229.179.106 (talk) 07:57, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's a pterosaur. Oddly, there was no talk page tag. J. Spencer (talk) 14:50, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Ornithocheirus giganteus
See no mention of this species in the article. JMK (talk) 10:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I used Unwin's work, so it's currently under Lonchodectes. J. Spencer (talk) 15:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction
The page appears to contradict itself... at the beginning it says that there's evidence that this pterosaur may have reached a wingspan of 40 feet, then asserts that WWD's statement that Ornithocheirus was the largest pterosaur was innacurate because Quetzalcoatlus was actually the largest pterosaur. But we know that the 40-foot estimate for Quetzalcoatlus was off, the wingspan was more like 35 feet, so if Ornithocheirus did have a 40-foot wingspan, that would make it larger than a 35-foot Quetzalcoatlus, at least in that dimension.

Isn't that a contradiction? 70.210.251.211 (talk) 18:33, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. I've failed to find any mention in the literature of fragments indicating such a large size (not that I've looked very hard :o). The BBC-site claims it was some shoulder girdle assigned to Tropeognathus and the WWD-book mentions wing finger fragments.--MWAK (talk) 12:56, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Which source says Qn was more like 35ft? Dinoguy2 (talk) 15:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, Langston himself in his 1981 Scientific American article gave a size of 11 - 12 metres, thus 36 to 39 feet. Most more recent literature, such as Paul (2002), mentions a 10-11 metres size.--MWAK (talk) 16:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * On the DML, now that it's back, I found a message from Heinz Peter Bredow that the WWD claim was based on fragments he studied. But this dates from 2000, so I wonder whether anything has been published since. Also Bredow indicated that 12 metres and 100 kg were "absolutely top end estimates".--MWAK (talk) 06:39, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Palaeornis, Cimoliornis, Ornithocheirus bunzeli
Witton et. al. (2009) have re-assessed the affinities of Palaeornis clifti Mantell, 1835 and concluded that it represents a lonchodectid and not an ornithocheirid as previously supposed. Cimoliornis may be closer to Azhdarchoidea than to Ornithocheroidea (Martill 2010), and Buffetaut et. al. (2011) have demonstrated that Ornithocheirus bunzeli is an indeterminate azhdarchid.

E. Buffetaut, A. Osi, and E. Prondvai. 2011. The pterosaurian remains from the Grünbach Formation (Campanian, Gosau Group) of Austria: a reappraisal of 'Ornithocheirus buenzeli. Geological Magazine 148:334-339

Martill, D.M. 2010. The early history of pterosaur discovery in Great Britain. In: Moody, R., Bueefetaut, E., Naish, D. & Martill, D.M. (eds) Dinosaurs and other extinct saurians. Geological Society, London, Special Publication, 343, 20-45.

Witton, M. P., Martill, D. M. and Green, M. 2009. On pterodactyloid diversity in the British Wealden (Lower Cretaceous) and a reappraisal of “Palaeornis” cliftii Mantell, 1844. Cretaceous Research, 30, 676-686.68.4.61.168 (talk) 05:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian
 * Thanks, the article should reflect that now. FunkMonk (talk) 08:34, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Reference
You may have overlooked this, but Seeley (1869) used Ornithocheirus for only three species (Pterodactylus simus, Ornithocheirus carteri and O. platyrhinus) while all other Ornithocheirus species erected by Seeley (1870) were classified in Ptenodactyus. However, Seeley seems to have changed his mind about Ptenodactylus being distinct from Ornithocheirus by classifying all Cambridge Greensand pterosaurs as Ornithocheirus in his 1870 work. Moreover, the species Ornithocheirus machaerorhynchus, Ornithocheirus hopkinsi, Ornithocheirus carteri, and Ornithocheirus huxleyi were originally given the nomina nuda Pterodactylus machaerorhynchus, P. hopkinsi, P. carteri, and P. huxleyi by Seeley (1864, 1865) before Seeley (1869, 1870) recognized them as being distinct from Pterodactylus.

H. G. Seeley. 1864. On the osteology and classification of Pterodactyles, Part II, with descriptions of the new species P. Hopkinsi and P. Oweni. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 1864:228

H. G. Seeley. 1865. On the pterodactyle as evidence of a new subclass of Vertebrata (Saurornia). Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 34:69

H.G. Seeley, 1869, Index to the Fossil Remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia from the Secondary System of Strata, arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge. III, Cambridge University Press

Seeley, H.G. (1870). The Ornithosauria: an Elementary Study of the Bones of Pterodactyles. Cambridge, 130 pp.

As a side note, here are some references you didn't cite:

R. Lydekker. 1888. Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum (Natural History). Part I. Containing the Orders Ornithosauria, Crocodilia, Dinosauria, Squamata, Rhynchocephalia, and Proterosauria. British Museum (Natural History), London 1-309

E. Koken. 1883. Die Reptilien der norddeutschen unteren Kreide. Zeitschrift der Deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 35:735-827

P. Wellnhofer. 1978. Pterosauria, Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie, Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1-82

E. D. Cope. 1872. On two new ornithosaurians from Kansas. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 12:420-422. 68.4.61.168 (talk) 20:03, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian

Most complete skeleton
The almost complete skeleton, exhibited in the Rio de Janiero Museum as Tropeognathus.--Wetman (talk) 16:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "Most complete", not "almost complete." It was previously known only from a skull. Now it's known from another partial skull and parts of the wing of a larger individual or species. MMartyniuk (talk) 16:11, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Tropeognathus
It seems there is no consensus on whether Tropeognathus belongs here or not, wouldn't it be better to split it? FunkMonk (talk) 00:36, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd support a split. Especially in this case, as I think it's useful to split species with contentious generic assignment, rather than spend pages and pages talking about which species are sometimes assigned to which genus by which people. As this is subjective and British vs. Brazilian workers tend to disagree on pretty much every single taxonomic assignment, the standard "genus only" format may not be best for most of these pterosaurs. MMartyniuk (talk) 11:27, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * In such cases, what would be the best title names? For example, if we wanted a separate article for Ornithocheirus cuvieri, would we need to use the original combination, Pterodactyluys cuvieri, considering that it might not even belong in Ornithocheirus, which makes both names incorrect? FunkMonk (talk) 11:55, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Could we put the genus in quotes? MMartyniuk (talk) 15:55, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think there's some kind of Wiki-policy against that, but I'm not sure... FunkMonk (talk) 16:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If that's the case I'd go either with the first taxon assignment or the most recent taxon assignment, if both are incorrect and it needs a new genus (and manual taxobox). MMartyniuk (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll start up an article for Tropeognathus if no one does it before me, but it'll only consist of material already in this article, so might need cleanup. FunkMonk (talk) 05:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Reshuffle
Ornithocheirus has just been reorganised: http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/article/5559/taxonomic-review-of-the-ornithocheirus-complex-pterosauria-from-the-cretaceous-of-england All images are free as well. Seems we need some new genus articles, and merge some of the species articles (several are redundant now, as many genera have been left monotypic). FunkMonk (talk) 16:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Ornithocheirus
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Ornithocheirus's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "LoneStarPterosaurs": From 2013 in archosaur paleontology:  From Phylogeny of pterosaurs:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 13:15, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Popular culture
Ornithocheirus appeared in walking with dinosaurs
 * Apparently this was because Tropeognathus was considered a junior synonym at the time, so it is not Ornithocheirus proper. FunkMonk (talk) 03:49, 29 May 2018 (UTC)