My new film, Kunpengopterus

Kunpengopterus antipollicatus was a middle to late Jurassic pterosaur from the Tiaojishan Formation in China. K. antipollicatus had an opposable digit that would have made the pterosaur adept at grabbing tree branches and possibly other little tasty things.

POV you called them all pterodactyls .

school work shtuff, we're working on a match-3 game which is like candy crush, and i decided to go with paleontology because i am predictable UwU

yes the second image is cropped, don't wanna share my name :p

Kungpengopterus by DJ Crumrine

'commission bookrat for a little dinosaur and or pterosaur' is still one of my few actual bucket list goals

Kunpengopterus head model so I can draw in more angles <3

#Archovember Day 18 - Cascocauda rong

The Anurognathids of the Jurassic and Cretaceous were highly derived pterosaurs that filled a similar niche to bats. They were nocturnal or crepuscular, insectivorous (though some larger species may have eaten fish as well), arboreal, and had short tails. However, Cascocauda rong of Middle - Late Jurassic China was an exception to the short tail rule. It’s tail was longer than other known anurognathids, earning it a name meaning “fluffy ancient tail.” But more importantly, Cascocauda provides us evidence of the complexity of pycnofibers in pterosaurs. Long thought to be simple and furlike, pterosaur pycnofibers were thought to be unique structures that evolved independently from feathers. However, Cascocauda had an array of different pycnofiber shapes and structures, one of them being similar to downy feathers with frayed ends. This further strengthens the hypothesis that feathers evolved before dinosaurs and pterosaurs even split into two different clades. Also, infrared spectral analysis was used on these pycnofibers, showing they had a similar absorption spectra to red human hair, making Cascocauda one of the only pterosaurs for which we know its coloration!

Found in the Tiaojishan Formation, Cascocauda rong would have lived with other anurognathids like Jeholopterus, Sinomacrops, and the tiny Luopterus. A wealth of other types of pterosaurs existed here as well, such as Darwinopterus, Kunpengopterus, Archaeoistiodactylus, Pterorhynchus, Wukongopterus, Daohugoupterus, Douzhanopterus, Fenghuangopterus, Jianchangnathus, Jianchangopterus, Qinglongopterus, and Liaodactylus. Dinosaurs lived here too, including the famously colored Anchiornis and other Anchiornithids like Aurornis, Caihong, Eosinopteryx, Pedopenna, Serikornis, and Xiaotingia, as well as the bizarrely bat-winged Scansoriopterygids Epidexipteryx, Scansoriopteryx, and Yi, and the quilled heterodontosaur Tianyulong. Arboreal cynodonts like Agilodocodon, Juramaia, Maiopatagium, Arboroharamiya, Volaticotherium, Vilevolodon, and Xianshou would have shared the trees with Cascocauda rong, adding to the busy, fluffy, feathery nature of this ancient forest.

Kunpengopterus

Kunpengopterus

Jungle indigenous fauna:

Dimetrodon

Arthropleura

Gigantopithecus

Kunpengopterus

Gastornis

Megacerops

Important Science News Update

A new pterosaur has just been described!! It’s called Kunpengopterus, it’s from the Jurassic of China, and it has,,,

Opposable thumbs??? 

[official release artwork by Chuang Zhao]

Lil grabby hands???

Not only does it have opposable thumbs, since it’s from the Jurassic that makes it the oldest known animal with true opposable thumbs! This suggests it was highly arboreal, using its hands to climb trees or other difficult terrain.

I just,,,

[art by Gabriel Ugueto]

Or like start them in the first place.

kunpengopterus catch bug :)

Thumb boy!

When you do furries of animals with weird fucked up hands (ie birds, bats, hooves) how do u make it look like the animal but also… be a hand

that depends! for all of the winged vertebrates (birds, bats, and pterosaurs) i have a variety of ways i do wings and hands, and i choose which to do on an individual basis. here, i made a little chart a while back!

when i do back wings or no wings, i just make the hands based on the feet of the animal, like for mob, shou, and serizawa.

for birdy/almost-bird dinosaury hand-wings like reigen or my fursona, i do a regular, 5-fingered hand, from which the feathers emerge. in winged dinosaurs, the primary feathers emerge from the middle digit (digit II on their 3-fingered hands) of the hand. in avian dinosaurs, 2 of the 3 digits are fully fused, but it's otherwise basically the same setup. so i have the primaries emerge from the humanoid hand's middle finger, and the secondaries emerge from the forearm (they're anchored in the ulna).

here's a diagram of a bird's wing showing the anchor points of the primary and secondary feathers, to help illustrate what i mean. image via manual of ornithology by proctor & lynch.

for bats- since bat wings are made of fingers rather than feathers, if i was to make wing hands it'd be like kijibayashi (the pheasant) in the first image, a fullsized, big wing with only the thumb free. this is the state of actual bat wings, but i'd give the anthro bat's thumb a similar range of movement to ours.

and for pterosaurs, i really like doing full-sized hand wings, because they have some unique anatomy that's super fun to play with.

image by scott hartman, labels added by me. as you can see here, the metacarpal bones- in you, these make up the palm, if you squish your hand a bit you'll feel them, they're long and connect to each finger- are INCREDIBLY elongated, basically making another 'forearm', at which the hand is at the very end.

pterosaurs have four fingers (with a couple exceptions- nyctosaurus have only the wing finger), three small ones making up a little 'hand', and the fourth finger is MASSIVE and supports the whole wing. contrast this with bats, in which the wing involves 4/5 digits.

when i make anthro pterosaurs with hand wings, basically all i do is add one extra finger, make the first digit an opposable thumb, and make the hand a bit more hand-like. this means that these guys appear to have only four fingers, since the fifth supports the wing. observe, minegishi:

minegishi is a kunpengopterus so their metacarpals are shorter than that pteranodon above, but you still get the idea.

(also, with regards to wing membranes on pterosaur and bat furries with hand wings.. real bat and pterosaur membranes attach around the ankle. i fudge that on furries, and have the membrane attach usually around the hip, maybe lower depending on the character. i generally don't bother to figure out how clothes would work with this, personally.)

i forgot that this ask also asked about hooves. for hooves, i generally go a pretty standard furry route and do humanoid hands with hoof-like endings, like a keratin covering on the last joint of each finger. sometimes, if i'm feeling spicy, i'll make artiodactyl (even-toed ungulates like deer, pigs, and sheep) hands symmetrical with two thumbs and two non-thumb fingers, to look like their symmetrical feet, but generally just regular hands with hoof ends.

hope that helps! this is just how i like to do em.

Kunpengopterus antipollicatus the handy monkedactyl.