ArticleNature communications2020
Dietary diversity and evolution of the earliest flying vertebrates revealed by dental microwear texture analysis.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- Histology and fossil diagenesis of a pterosaur tooth from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous of Brazil).Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Machine learning approaches to dietary classification from dental microtexture in primates.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- New large pterosaur tracks from Korea and their implications on terrestrial behavior.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Climate Change Challenges Grey Wolf Resilience: Insights From Dental Microwear.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Comparative dentition in free-living bird nest astigmatan mites.Experimental & applied acarology · 2025Review
- Osteology and functional morphology of a transitional pterosaur Dearc sgiathanach from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) of Scotland.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Calcium and strontium isotopes in extant diapsid reptiles reflect dietary tendencies-a reference frame for diet reconstructions in the fossil record.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A giant specimen ofPeerJ · 2025Article
- The oldest monofenestratan pterosaur from the Queso Rallado locality (Cañadón Asfalto Formation, Toarcian) of Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Enhanced flight performance and adaptive evolution of Mesozoic giant cicadas.Science advances · 2024Article
- Haliskia peterseni, a new anhanguerian pterosaur from the late Early Cretaceous of Australia.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Effects of human disturbances on wildlife behaviour and consequences for predator-prey overlap in Southeast Asia.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Intraspecific variation in the pterosaurPeerJ · 2024Article
- Three-dimensional dental microwear in type-Maastrichtian mosasaur teeth (Reptilia, Squamata).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Multi-proxy dentition analyses reveal niche partitioning between sympatric herbivorous dinosaurs.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Evidence for a mixed-age group in a pterosaur footprint assemblage from the early Upper Cretaceous of Korea.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Two emetolite-pterosaur associations from the Late Jurassic of China: showing the first evidence for antiperistalsis in pterosaurs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- A new istiodactylid pterosaur,PeerJ · 2022Article
- Ontogenetic growth in the crania ofPeerJ · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pterosaurs, the first vertebrates to evolve active flight, lived between 210 and 66 million years ago. They were important components of Mesozoic ecosystems, and reconstructing pterosaur diets is vital for understanding their origins, their roles within Mesozoic food webs and the impact of other flying vertebrates (i.e. birds) on their evolution. However, pterosaur dietary hypotheses are poorly constrained as most rely on morphological-functional analogies. Here we constrain the diets of 17 pterosaur genera by applying dental microwear texture analysis to the three-dimensional sub-micrometre scale tooth textures that formed during food consumption. We reveal broad patterns of dietary diversity (e.g. Dimorphodon as a vertebrate consumer; Austriadactylus as a consumer of 'hard' invertebrates) and direct evidence of sympatric niche partitioning (Rhamphorhynchus as a piscivore; Pterodactylus as a generalist invertebrate consumer). We propose that the ancestral pterosaur diet was dominated by invertebrates and later pterosaurs evolved into piscivores and carnivores, shifts that might reflect ecological displacements due to pterosaur-bird competition.
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