A new cat-sized flightless azhdarchoid from Canada

Martin-Silverstone, Witton, Arbour and Currie 2019 bring us
news of a humerus and several vertebrae (some fused into a notarium) they taxonomically narrow down to a cat-sized Campanian (Late Cretaceous) azhdarchoid pterosaur. It was found on Hornsby Island, close to the much larger Victoria Island in Southwestern Canada.

The authors report,
“the individual was approaching maturity at time of death.”

In their discussion, the authors state:
“The thin bone walls, gracile bone construction and humeral morphology of RBCM.EH.2009.019.0001, indicate it clearly belonged to a volant Mesozoic animal, a pterosaur or avialan.”

There’s not much to see or reconstruct here.
The few bones found are fragments still in the matrix. The link below will take you to the online PDF.

On closer inspection,
the small triangular deltopectoral crest is smaller than in flightless pterosaurs (e.g. Sos2428 in Fig. 1) and the bone is thicker than one might expect of a volant pterosaur. The authors do not consider the possibility that their specimen had a volant ancestry, but was itself no longer volant, as happens often enough in the azhdarchid line of wading pterosaurs. Some were tiny (Fig. 1), some cat-sized, some man-sized and others much larger. Some were volant. Others were not, convergent with birds of all sizes.

Dr. Witton has invested much time and treasure
in telling us giant azhdarchids were volant, despite the facts that weigh against that hypothesis. He also omits the data on three flightless pterosaurs, including Sos2428 (Fig. 1). Now we can add a fourth, his new cat-sized Hornby Island pterosaur.

Earlier co-author Witton
and Habib 2010 discussed hypothetical flightlessness in giant azhdarchids from many angles, but never introduced actual flightless taxa, two of which were known at the time. This online paper included infamous illustrations of an ornithocheirid manus in the process of a quadrupedal launch that had been cheated to implant the wing finger on the substrate, something that never happens according to the ichnite record. They did this by shrinking the free fingers.

Postscript
Interesting blog post here on an unfortunate bone misidentification on a paper earlier by one of the co-authors. Thank goodness Witton chose not to vilify his co-author.

References
Martin-Silverstone E, Witton MP, Arbour VM and Currie PJ 2019. A small azhdarchoid pterosaur from the latest Cretaceous, the age of flying giants. Royal Society open science 3: 160333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160333
Witton MP, Habib MB 2010. On the Size and Flight Diversity of Giant Pterosaurs, the Use of Birds as Pterosaur Analogues and Comments on Pterosaur Flightlessness. PLoS ONE 5(11): e13982. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013982