Publications by authors named "Robert S H Smyth"
Article Synopsis
- Pterosaurs, the first flying vertebrates, had a significant impact on Mesozoic ecosystems, but their ground movement and terrestrial ecology are not well understood.
- Research shows that pterosaurs had a diverse range of hand and foot structures, similar to modern birds, which indicates they adapted to various non-flying lifestyles, with early species showing traits for climbing and later ones for ground movement.
- The evolution of ground-based locomotion in pterosaurs involved changes in anatomy, allowing them to exploit terrestrial environments and leading to new feeding strategies and larger body sizes across different lineages.
Here we describe a new pterosaur footprint assemblage from the Hwasun Seoyuri tracksite in the Upper Cretaceous Jangdong Formation of the Neungju Basin in Korea. The assemblage consists of many randomly oriented prints in remarkably high densities but represents a single ichnotaxon, Pteraichnus. Individuals exhibit a large but continuous size range, some of which, with a wingspan estimated at 0.
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