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I think this article needs a scientific restoration of Anhanguera as none of my dinosaur books feature it and I have no idea what it actually looked like as a flesh-and-blood animal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.148.242 (talk) 01:37, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to try my hand at providing a restoration 9haven't done any pterosaurs in a while!), but in the mean time the Ornithocheirus seen in Walking with dinosaurs is not a bad substitute. The reconstruction is still relatively accurate, and the two animals were nearly identical, except in crest size and tooth placement. MMartyniuk (talk) 19:13, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Being of "sculptures", they might well be removed from Commons `: >(. A restoration by MMartyniuk would be most welcome! We also have a picture by John Conway of Anhanguera piscator in flight:
The WWD representation of Ornithocheirus gives a fair general impression of the proportions of the body. However, all described Anhanguera specimens are an order of magnitude smaller. The lack of consensus on which species should be included in the genus makes it problematic to provide details of the build of "the animal" because there really were several.--MWAK (talk) 08:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just meant the WWD as a suggestion for the user above to get an idea of what it looked like, not to include in the article (it depicts a different species anyway). Conway's digipainting of piscator is great (I own a print!) but it's assignment to Anhenguera rather than Coloborhynchus or something else is debatable. What we need (and what I'll probably try to do this week) is a resto of A. blittersdorffi and/or A. santanae. MWAK is right--"Anhanguera" is a currently large and ever-changing assemblage of possibly-related species, not 'an animal'. It's like Megalosaurus in the '20s. This is a case where it would be a lot less confusing to simply spin each species into its own genus and stop arguing semantics. MMartyniuk (talk) 12:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously though, looked at this again and the crest begins well posterior to the upper jaw tip, which is a key feature of Anhanguera, so Holtz was spot on :) MMartyniuk (talk) 12:28, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, no problem. But we've already got a good skeletal mount in the taxobox... does anybody know what specimen that is? It looks like it could be the gracile morph of A. santanae or possibly Cearadactylus ligabuei. MMartyniuk (talk) 15:11, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Great paintings! :o) The taxobox skeleton is, I believe, one of the copies sold by the Museu Nacional of a reconstruction they made in the nineties, representing a sort of generalised Anhanguera and largely based on the respective A. santanae specimens but also on NSM-PV 19892 which at the time had not been named as a separate species. Hence the, with hindsight, strange combination of features (A. piscator dentition, low crest). The copy mount shows some obvious mistakes, such as forward pointing fingers and digitigrade feet.--MWAK (talk) 08:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Just looked up NSM-PV 19892 in Veldmeijer's thesis and it is indeed referred to C. piscator and has a relatively low crest. The image should probably be moved to Coloborhynchus or simply be removed for incorrect posture. MMartyniuk (talk) 15:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That might be a bit hasty. After all, I could well be bloody wrong about the whole thing and in my experience pterosaur skeletal mounts are always sadly distorted :o). Kellner, Unwin, Veldmeijer and Fastnacht disagree about the nomenclature. We must resist the temptation to choose one of them as possessing the true understanding of the matter. That would be POV and besides, there cannot be a true understanding as scientifically there is no objective state of affairs corresponding to "belonging to a genus". And, even when Coloborhynchus is not to be deemed a nomen dubium or strictly limited to the holotype, it could still be a plesiomorphic grade.--MWAK (talk) 06:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
" there is no objective state of affairs corresponding to "belonging to a genus"." Sure there is--if a specimen belongs to the type species of a genus, it will always belong to that genus. I'd recommend only including type species of the various ornithocheirid/anhanguerid genera in the taxoboxes for this reason. MMartyniuk (talk) 12:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, most of those old ornithocheirid specimens are figured here (there are several pages)[2] if one looks around, so we could get images of the type specimens of several genera if those are more appropriate. It is very confusing though. FunkMonk (talk) 07:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not ideal, but certainly better than using hybrid images. Distinguishing ornithocheirids is confusing enough without displaying mounts based on several species combined. Are those images available for wiki? MMartyniuk (talk) 12:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, they're all PD, from an old book written by Richard Owen himself. I'ved added some of the images to articles, and A. fittoni and A. cuvieri are figured also. FunkMonk (talk) 21:09, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pterosaur_exhibit.jpg){kind=link}