This comes from a press release with photos,
not an academic paper. Evidently there is a new giant azhdarchid pterosaur named Dracula, known from ‘a majority of bones’, from which the following museum mount was created (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Dracula the giant azhdarchid pterosaur museum mount. Hopefully it’s not too late to fix the problems here. Most will just take some twisting, some disassembly and reassembly.
Here are the visible problems:
- The ridged sternal complex looks like it was created from gastralia. No other sternal complex has such ridges and those from azhdarchids are not big and square.
- Fingers 1–3 are located laterally. They should be medially.
- The pteroid should anchor on the radiale (not the ulnare), the pre-axial carpal on the medial side of the distal carpal. And the pteroid should always point back to the deltopectoral crest.
- In azhdarchids m4.4 is always tiny,
- This looks like a dinosaur pterygoid.
- Pedal digit 5 should be on the lateral side of the foot.
- Twist metacarpal 4 90º laterally so the wing finger extends posterior to the forelimb.
Translated from German:
“In Denkendorf you can now marvel at a bone of “Dracula”, several dozen other bone fragments of the animal are located in Florida, where they are scientifically studied with elaborate technology. A publication on the sensation finding, the researchers have announced for the fall. Until then, “Dracula” remains only the unofficial name of the pterodactyl.”
Maybe it is all based on just the one cervical and some shards. We’ll find out later.
Some links below,
courtesy of Ben Creisler on the Dinosaur Mailing List.
https://www.n-tv.de/wissen/Museum-stellt-Riesensaurier-Dracula-aus-article20350242.html
The Pterosaur Heresies 