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      Earliest filter-feeding pterosaur from the Jurassic of China and ecological evolution of Pterodactyloidea

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          Abstract

          Pterosaurs were a unique clade of flying reptiles that were contemporaries of dinosaurs in Mesozoic ecosystems. The Pterodactyloidea as the most species-diverse group of pterosaurs dominated the sky during Cretaceous time, but earlier phases of their evolution remain poorly known. Here, we describe a 160 Ma filter-feeding pterosaur from western Liaoning, China, representing the geologically oldest record of the Ctenochasmatidae, a group of exclusive filter feeders characterized by an elongated snout and numerous fine teeth. The new pterosaur took the lead of a major ecological transition in pterosaur evolution from fish-catching to filter-feeding adaptation, prior to the Tithonian (145–152 Ma) diversification of the Ctenochasmatidae. Our research shows that the rise of ctenochasmatid pterosaurs was followed by the burst of eco-morphological divergence of other pterodactyloid clades, which involved a wide range of feeding adaptations that considerably altered the terrestrial ecosystems of the Cretaceous world.

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          A Jurassic eutherian mammal and divergence of marsupials and placentals.

          Placentals are the most abundant mammals that have diversified into every niche for vertebrates and dominated the world's terrestrial biotas in the Cenozoic. A critical event in mammalian history is the divergence of eutherians, the clade inclusive of all living placentals, from the metatherian-marsupial clade. Here we report the discovery of a new eutherian of 160 Myr from the Jurassic of China, which extends the first appearance of the eutherian-placental clade by about 35 Myr from the previous record, reducing and resolving a discrepancy between the previous fossil record and the molecular estimate for the placental-marsupial divergence. This mammal has scansorial forelimb features, and provides the ancestral condition for dental and other anatomical features of eutherians.
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            A pre-Archaeopteryx troodontid theropod from China with long feathers on the metatarsus.

            The early evolution of the major groups of derived non-avialan theropods is still not well understood, mainly because of their poor fossil record in the Jurassic. A well-known result of this problem is the 'temporal paradox' argument that is sometimes made against the theropod hypothesis of avian origins. Here we report on an exceptionally well-preserved small theropod specimen collected from the earliest Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of western Liaoning, China. The specimen is referable to the Troodontidae, which are among the theropods most closely related to birds. This new find refutes the 'temporal paradox'1 and provides significant information on the temporal framework of theropod divergence. Furthermore, the extensive feathering of this specimen, particularly the attachment of long pennaceous feathers to the pes, sheds new light on the early evolution of feathers and demonstrates the complex distribution of skeletal and integumentary features close to the dinosaur-bird transition.
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              The earliest pterodactyloid and the origin of the group.

              The pterosaurs were a diverse group of Mesozoic flying reptiles that underwent a body plan reorganization, adaptive radiation, and replacement of earlier forms midway through their long history, resulting in the origin of the Pterodactyloidea, a highly specialized clade containing the largest flying organisms. The sudden appearance and large suite of morphological features of this group were suggested to be the result of it originating in terrestrial environments, where the pterosaur fossil record has traditionally been poor [1, 2], and its many features suggested to be adaptations to those environments [1, 2]. However, little evidence has been available to test this hypothesis, and it has not been supported by previous phylogenies or early pterodactyloid discoveries. We report here the earliest pterosaur with the diagnostic elongate metacarpus of the Pterodactyloidea, Kryptodrakon progenitor, gen. et sp. nov., from the terrestrial Middle-Upper Jurassic boundary of Northwest China. Phylogenetic analysis confirms this species as the basalmost pterodactyloid and reconstructs a terrestrial origin and a predominantly terrestrial history for the Pterodactyloidea. Phylogenetic comparative methods support this reconstruction by means of a significant correlation between wing shape and environment also found in modern flying vertebrates, indicating that pterosaurs lived in or were at least adapted to the environments in which they were preserved.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                R Soc Open Sci
                R Soc Open Sci
                RSOS
                royopensci
                Royal Society Open Science
                The Royal Society Publishing
                2054-5703
                February 2017
                1 February 2017
                1 February 2017
                : 4
                : 2
                : 160672
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Institute of Paleontology, Shenyang Normal University , Shenyang 110034, People's Republic of China
                [2 ]School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People's Republic of China
                [3 ]Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China
                [4 ]School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK
                [5 ]State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences , Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China
                [6 ]Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta , Edmonton, Alberta, CanadaT6G 2E9
                Author notes
                Author for correspondence: Ke-Qin Gao e-mail: kqgao@ 123456pku.edu.cn

                Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3670201.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5765-4596
                Article
                rsos160672
                10.1098/rsos.160672
                5367317
                9e09fdd0-d600-4468-98dd-e58503d6eb91
                © 2017 The Authors.

                Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 7 September 2016
                : 4 November 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: Liaoning millions of talents project;
                Award ID: 2014Q110
                Funded by: Public Science and Technology Research Funds of Land Resources of China;
                Award ID: 201311120
                Funded by: National Natural Science Foundation of China, http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001809;
                Award ID: NSFC 41272016
                Categories
                1005
                144
                1001
                60
                70
                Earth Science
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                February, 2017

                jurassic pterosaurs,feeding adaptations,palaeoecology,yanliao biota,western liaoning of china

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