Luchibang had a nose job? Maybe not.

Hone et al 2024 reported news
on their large Chinese pterosaur, Luchibang (Hone and Xu 2018, Hone et all 2020, Fig 1), which they identified as an istiodactylid, but nested with dsungaripterids.

By contrast, the large pterosaur tree (LPT, 263 taxa) identified Luchibang (ELDM 1000, Fig 1) as a large pterodactylid in 2018, that nested with other large pterodactylids not tested by Hone et al at any time.

On that issue, Hone et al 2024 wrote,
“The only issue was a mismatch in some of the postcranial anatomy to that of
typical istiodactylids (see also Ozeki et al., 2023), although again this had been considered in the original paper and the discussion and analyses therein (Hone et al., 2020).

That postcranial mismatch turned out to be important.

Unfortunately,
Hone has earned infamy for dismissing data in favor of retaining a paradigm. He and his co-aiuthors invoked ‘shrinkage’ to uphold an invalid bat-wing pterosaur wing membrane hypothesis). He presented in situ data (e.g. flipped wingtip of Bellubrunnus) without considering taphonomy. The list of Hone mistakes and issues is very long.

Unfortunately, Hone et al 2024 only add to that infamy.

Taxon exclusion
prevented the authors from correctly nesting Luchibang in 2018, 2020  and 2024. Only one Pterodactylus: P. antiquus, is included in the authors’ cladogram. Their taxon ‘Luchibang postcrania’ nests between Dsungaripterus + Noripterus and Azhdarchidae + Tapejaridae. This has been wrong since Peters 2007 due to traditional taxon exclusion.

In Hone et al 2024, only Dsungaripterus + Noripterus separates Pterodactylus antiquus from Luchibang postcrania So the authors were close. Very close to pterodactylids.

On that note, pterosaur outgroup taxa in the cladogram of Hone et al 2024
include Ornithosuchus, Herrerasaurus and Scleromochlus, as in Benton 1999. Mike Benton taught David Hone and gave Hone a PhD for their pterosaur supertree papers.

The ‘Scleromochlus – archosaur’ hypothesis of pterosaur origins was refuted by Peters 2000, who recovered four other taxa basal to pterosaurs using three previously published analyses. Mike Benton writes university textbooks clinging to outdated hypotheses, so there’s money in this. And prestige.

Hone et al 2024 cited Ozeki et al 2023 when they wrote,
“Ozeki et al. (2023) suggest that the postcranial material belongs to the tapejaroid
Sinopterus or a closely related taxon based on proportional similarities to Sinopterus. We agree that this postcranial material represents a tapejaroid,”

The authors also wrote,
“Distinguished from other istiodactylids by the following combination of characters:”

In the LPT toothy istiodactylids are not related to toothless tapejarids. An paleontologist, author, referee or editor should have caught this error.

Regarding today’s news, the Hone et al 2024 wrote,
“ELDM 1000 was recently on loan to the Inner Mongolia Museum of Natural History and part of the storage facility of the museum was unfortunately flooded and the specimen was submerged in water. The flooding has revealed that there are different matrices between the anterior part of the jaws (hereafter, part A of ELDM 1000) and the back of the skull and the postcranial skeleton (hereafter, part B of ELMD 1000), which strongly suggest this
specimen is a chimera.”

“Here we correct the record on the original specimen and the interpretations that come from this as presented by Hone et al. (2020).”

“Evidence of coarse sands (not added by the flood) can be found surrounding the skeleton, which were not present in the shales that are with ELDM 1000A. This naturally suggests that the sands were added artificially and that most of the original matrix was removed during initial preparation before the specimen originally reached the museum. The sands were most likely glued to part A because they have been retained after the water damage from the flooding, and all the matrix of part A covering the mixed layer was lost.”

My only question is:
How was it possible for Chinese rockhound (= not museum) preparators to find a matching distal rostrum and mandible for the proximal  rostrum and mandible? (See Fig 2). For that answer Hone et al also mildly question the posterior skull area when they say, “that may also be problematic” in their figure 1 caption.

The problem remains,
the purportedly added rostrum/skull is not paint. Nor sculpture. It belongs to a pterosaur that matches the post-crania both in situ and phylogenetically.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Hone et al wrote,
“Evidence of coarse sands (not added by the flood) can be found surrounding the skeleton, which were not present in the shales that are with ELDM 1000A. This naturally suggests that the sands were added artificially and that most of the original matrix was removed during initial preparation before the specimen originally reached the museum. The sands were most likely glued to part A because they have been retained after the water damage from the flooding, and all the matrix of part A covering the mixed layer was lost.”

That last sentence is confusing.
Sounds like they could have said: part A, the largest part, retained artificially added sand because that matrix was well-glued to hold the sand. Otherwise sand around the jaws was lost because that sand was not well-glued to the underlying matrix.

Another sentence also bothers me,
“most of the original matrix was removed during initial preparation.”

That means all new matrix would have to have been added during preparation. And you need matrix before you add glue and sand (to hide the cracks in the matrix).
1) That’s too much work for such a fragile and profitable fossil.
2) That puts the entire specimen under suspicion, not just the jaws.
3) Maybe just the sand around the jaws was washed away from the underlying matrix because the glue was applied as well as elsewhere.

Two of the five authors, David Hone and Adam Fitch,
speak and write fluent English as their first language. Writing/Editing problems like this (and several other instances) indicate these two did not write or edit the final draft.

If they did… that’s a bigger issue.

Decades ago, on a trip to China,
I saw mismatching anatomy on other specimens. So that does happen. Or did happen.

By contrast, this specimen, ELDM 1000, does not show mismatching anatomy,
just loss of dark sand from the matrix around the jaws.

The authors concluded,
“In this case, despite our checks and concerns, the original authors were deceived by the changes made to the specimen. We hope that this work serves to correct the record on this specimen and any echoes that the original paper has had on the scientific literature. The original authors are chastened by this experience and trust that this serves a timely warning for others assessing the validity of specimens offered to them.”

Maybe this time Hone et al were wrong about thinking they were wrong.

References
Hone DWE and Benton MJ 2007. An evaluation of the phylogenetic relationships of the pterosaurs to the archosauromorph reptiles. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 5:465-469. PDF online
Hone DWE and Benton MJ 2008.Contrasting supertree and total-evidence methods: the origin of the pterosaurs. In: Hone DWE, Buffetaut E, editors. Flugsaurier: pterosaur papers in honour of Peter Wellnhofer. Vol. 28. Munich: Zittel B. p. 35-60.
Hone DWE and Xu 2018. An unusual and nearly complete young istiodactylid from the Yixian Formation, China. Flugsaurier 2018: the 6th International Symposium on Pterosaurs. Los Angeles, USA. Abstracts: 53–56.
Hone DWE, Fitch AJ, Ma F, and Xu X 2020. An unusual new genus of istiodactylid pterosaur from China based on a near complete specimen. Palaeontologica Electronica 23(1):a09 Online link to PDF
Hone DWE et al (4 co-authors) 2024. A reassessment on Luchibang xingzhe: A still valid istiodactylid pterosaur within a chimera. Palaeontologia Electronica, 27(2):a41.
https://doi.org/10.26879/1359
palaeo-electronica.org/content/2024/5273-luchibang-is-a-chinese-chimera
Peters D 2000a. Description and Interpretation of Interphalangeal Lines in Tetrapods. Ichnos 7:11-41.
Peters D 2000b. A reexamination of four prolacertiforms with implications for pterosaur phylogenesis. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia 106: 293–336.
Peters D 2007. The origin and radiation of the Pterosauria. In D. Hone ed. Flugsaurier. The Wellnhofer pterosaur meeting, 2007, Munich, Germany. p. 27.

What exactly IS a pterosaur? – part 3 of 3

Flugsaurier 2018: ‘Young istiodactylid’ nests with tall pterodactylids in the LPT

Istiodactylids to scale and their convergence with large pterodactylids

Luchibang xingzhe enters the LPT… again… still not an istiodactlyid

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2024/08/19/luchibang-had-a-nose-job-maybe-not/