#dearc sgiathanach

[makairodonx]

A color-pencil impression of the giant rhamphorhynchine pterosaur Dearc sgiathanach, which hails from the Bathonian-aged Lealt Shale Formation of Scotland, for St. Andrew’s Day. It had a 3-meter-long wingspan and was probably the single largest pterosaur of the Middle Jurassic, around 168-165 million years ago.

[thysanniia]

What are your thoughts on pterosaurs?

aaaaaaaaaa i completely forgot about this ask it's been here for months i'm so sorryyyy T^T

I love pterosaurs!! They're wonderful and deserve wayyyy more love than they get. I've been meaning to make more art of them for ages, and I have a bunch of unfinished pieces of them but no finished ones yet because I suck at finishing stuff.

As an apology for taking so long to reply to this, have this Dearc sketch I made like a year and a half ago!

Originally I was gonna develop this into a full piece, but then I decided to do a different composition of the same concept, so this went unused and forgotten. I'm hoping to get the final version finished before the end of the year, so look forward to that! And hey, maybe I'll develop this version a little further too someday, I do still quite like it :3

[terry-the-insane]

the birds

[palaeoplushies]

I’ve made some Dearc sgiathanach! This plush is made from a custom printed soft velvet pattern of an original design, hand crafted and stuffed with plastic rods in the wings to give them a more realistic shape. Popper/snap fastenings on the wings mean that they can be folded or outstretched realistically. They have plastic eyes with secure backings. Plushie Dimensions: Both variants are 51cm from nose to tail tip, 100cm wingspan. Description: Dearc sgiathanach is a species of long-tailed Pterosaur from the Middle Jurassic of the Isle of Skye. It’s name is Gaelic for both “winged reptile” and “reptile from Skye”. They’re for sale over on my website; https://www.palaeoplushies.com/shop/dearc

[si-nequal-is]

Dearc sgiathanach

Color scheme based on Scathach from FGO

[notsimroart]

I didn't initially get round to illustrating the recently-described Scottish pterosaur, Dearc sgiathanach, so what better day for a watercolour sketch of this impressively large Jurassic rhamphorhynchid than St Andrew's Day!

[c-kiddo]

I hope it's okey if I see dinosaur related stuff to send to you, I enjoy showing things I know people deeply care about. There's another game called Jurrassic World Evolution, and the models/art look So good!

https://twitter.com/WryCritic/status/1690453902020186112?t=_WlKMAzh2hnYmbStQTwF1w&s=19

yess it is ok i like seeing it !! thats cool im watching videos of the different dinosaurs/marine creatures/pterosaurs in jurassic world evolution 2 (since it has more. including the too-big quetzalcoatlus from the movie lol) . i like th deinocheirus model, big fuzzy guy, i only with their therizinosaurus was fuzzier like that too tbh. it kinda looks a bit too vacuum packed scary monster dino to me.

also thats cool the twitter post you linked, i didnt realise that op works at edinburgh uni and was involved in researching dearc sgiathanach :O thats so neat. ive been to other of the hebrides but rly want to visit the isle of skye for paleo + geological + stars reasons now.. need to avoid the touristy times of year though lol

[deltacygniart]

Dearc Sgiathanach piece rework

[confusedhadrosaur]

Day 7:  Dearc sgiathanach

[ikabolt]

Pterosaur drawings

[smylealong]

Dearc Sgiathanach

Some of you might have seen the news of “the largest pterosaur ever” or some variation of that doing rounds on various social media platforms. The statement is both true and false at the same time, and I will explain why.

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrate to have evolved powered flight. They appear abruptly in the fossil record in the Triassic period and from there on proceeded to evolve into a variety of shapes and sizes before dying out in the k-pg mass extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs as well. Like birds, pterosaurs, too, had very light bones and paper-thin bone walls, a feature that doesn’t lend well to fossilization. Therefore, finding a complete pterosaur fossil is extremely rare.

The newly identified species, Dearc sgiathanach (pronounced jark ski-an-ach), meaning “winged reptile” in Gaelic, belonged to the family ‘Ramphorhynchidae’ and lived during the Middle Jurassic approximately 170 million years ago. It is said to have achieved a wingspan around 2.5m to 3m (8.2 feet to 9.8 feet). That would make it a very large flying creature indeed, rivalling the wingspan of the Andean Condor which stands at 2.7m -3.04m (8.9 feet -10 feet). This specimen is also the most complete specimen found in Scotland, answering several questions in the pterosaur’s evolutionary history that arose from the paucity of fossils. This makes the discovery of Dearc sgiathanach a significant one globally.

However, this isn’t the biggest pterosaur ever. That credit goes to an animal from the Late Cretaceous (68-66 million years ago), called Quetzalcoatlus. Standing as tall as a giraffe, Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of about 10.9m (36 feet). To make a comparison for scale, Dearc sgiathanach was about as big as a King size mattress while Quetzalcoatlus was about as large as a two-seater airplane. There is a possibility that Hatzegopteryx, an Azhdarchid found in the Hatzeg island was about as big or bigger than Quetzalcoatlus, but there are not enough fossils of the animal to establish the fact.

In summation, what this means is that while Dearc sgiathanach was indeed a big pterosaur, it was by no means the biggest ever. However, it was the largest flying creature when it was alive, making it the biggest known JURASSIC pterosaur. It is also one of the most complete fossils of Pterosaurs ever found.

Illustration: Natalia Jagielska

Postcranial skeleton and dentition of Dearc sgiathanach. From Jagielska et al., 2022

[guthrie-odonto]

Funny that Pixar’s new red panda movie that’s all about growing up and finding yourself came out right before the month when I turn 21 (also happy birthday to me!)

Anyway, I thought about the film’s premise and, one train of thought later, applied it to myself but with the beast aspect being the recently-discovered Scottish pterosaur Dearc sgiathanach and, given that gene tests show that I have ancestry from the isles on my mom’s side, the quirk having Celtic roots instead of Chinese ones. (the crest is keratinous/soft tissue, so there's no inconsistencies with the fossil; the fossil didn't even have the top of the skull intact anyway)

pictured: the train of though for me coming up with this

[speedygal]

Feb 22 (Reuters) - A fossil jawbone peeking out from a limestone seashore on Scotland's Isle of Skye led scientists to discover the skeleton of a pterosaur that showed that these remarkable flying reptiles got big tens of millions of years earlier than previously known.

Researchers said on Tuesday this pterosaur, named Dearc sgiathanach, lived roughly 170 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, soaring over lagoons in a subtropical landscape and catching fish and squid with crisscrossing teeth perfect for snaring slippery prey.

[invasato]

new pterosaur dropped his names dearc :-)

[saritawolff]

#Archovember Day 7 - Dearc sgiathanach

Discovered earlier this year, Dearc sgiathanach changed what we knew about pterosaur evolution. Previously it was thought that pterosaurs did not reach large sizes until the Pterodactyloids of the Cretaceous appeared. But Dearc lived in Middle Jurassic Scotland, dwarfing most all other Rhamphorhynchids with an estimated wingspan between 2.2 meters and 3.8 meters (12.5 feet)! Histology studies also suggest that while the animal was fairly mature at the time of death, it was still growing.

While large, Dearc still had a fairly normal Rhamphorhynchid body plan: short neck, long tail, and interlocking teeth. And, like most other Rhamphorrhynchids, It likely used those needle-like teeth for catching fish. Not many other fossils have been found from the Lealt Shale Formation, aside from ornithopod, stegosaur, and theropod tracks, as well as a theropod tooth. But it could have certainly shared its environment with other Middle Jurassic European dinosaurs such as the sauropod Cetiosaurus, the theropods Megalosaurus and Proceratosaurus, and the stegosaurid Loricatosaurus.

[si-nequal-is]

Dearc sgiathanach, the biggest of long-tailed pterosaur from early jurassic Skye island.