SVP abstracts – 1 Thanatosdrakon: still not an azhdarchid

November 5, 2022, the last day
of SVP abstract presentations at the Royal Ontario Museum. That means it’s ‘Abstracts Season‘. Let’s take a look at seventeen of the most interesting and erroneous abstracts presented this year at the annual convention of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

We looked at ‘Thanatosdrakon’ earlier
here and determined it was the largest Pteranodon (Fig 2), hence the ‘unique characters’ and ‘anatomical peculiarities’ David et al observed in the specimen.

Suggestion: add taxa. The overlooked variety in Pteranodon has been traditionally ignored. The FHSM VP 2183 specimen of Pteranodon most closely matches that of Thanatosdrakon (Fig 1) as noted earlier here. Add this taxon to your cladogram and report your findings.

References
David LD, Kellner AWA and Gonzalez Riga B 2022. Anatomical peculiarities of the giant pterosaur Thanatosdrakon amaru (Azhdarchidae, Pterodactyloidea) from Upper Cretaceous deposits of Mendoza, Argentina. SVP abstracts 2022:121.