Sordes was a small basal
pterosaurPterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period...
that lived in the late
JurassicThe Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Ma to Ma, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the "Age of Reptiles". The start of the period is marked by...
Period of the Mesozoic era.
The genus was named in 1971 by Alexander Grigorevich Sharov. The
type speciesIn taxonomy, a type species is a technical phrase, involved in the application of formal names...
is
Sordes pilosus. The genus name means "filth" or "scum" in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
, a reference to evil spirits in local folklore. The
specific nameIn zoological nomenclature, a specific name is the second part in the name of a species...
is Latin for "hairy"; despite
sordes being female, it has not yet been emended to
pilosa.
The genus is based on
holotypeA holotype is one of several possible biological types. A type is what fixes a name to a taxon. A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described...
PIN 2585/3, a crushed relatively complete skeleton on a slab.
Sordes was a small basal
pterosaurPterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period...
that lived in the late
JurassicThe Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Ma to Ma, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the "Age of Reptiles". The start of the period is marked by...
Period of the Mesozoic era.
The genus was named in 1971 by Alexander Grigorevich Sharov. The
type speciesIn taxonomy, a type species is a technical phrase, involved in the application of formal names...
is
Sordes pilosus. The genus name means "filth" or "scum" in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
, a reference to evil spirits in local folklore. The
specific nameIn zoological nomenclature, a specific name is the second part in the name of a species...
is Latin for "hairy"; despite
sordes being female, it has not yet been emended to
pilosa.
The genus is based on
holotypeA holotype is one of several possible biological types. A type is what fixes a name to a taxon. A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described...
PIN 2585/3, a crushed relatively complete skeleton on a slab. It was found in the sixties at the foothills of the Karatau in
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country situated in Eurasia that is ranked as the ninth largest country in the world. It is also the world's largest landlocked country. Its territory of 2,727,300 km² is greater than Western Europe...
. The
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record...
shows remains of the soft parts, such as membranes and hair. This was the first unequivocal proof that pterosaurs had a layer of fur. The integument served as insulation, an indication the group was warm-blooded, and provided a streamlined flight profile. The hairlike structures are present in two main types: longer at the extreme part of the wing membrane and shorter near the body. In the nineties David Unwin argued that both types were essentially not hairs but reinforcing fibres of the flight membranes. Later he emphasized that "hair" in the form of fur was indeed present on the body, after the find of new specimens clearly showing this.
Sharov had already referred a
paratype- Zoology :In zoological nomenclature, a paratype is officially defined as "Each specimen of a type series other than the holotype."In turn, this does depend on the definition of "type series." A type series is the material that was cited in the original publication of the new species or...
or second specimen: PIN 2470/1, again a fairly complete skeleton on a slab. By 2003 another six exemplars had been discovered.
Sordes had a 0.63 m (two feet feet) wingspan. The wings were relatively short. It had a slender, not round, head with moderately long, pointed jaws. The skull was about eight centimetres long. Its teeth were widely spaced, small and slanted. It had a short neck. It had a long tail, accounting for over half its length, with at the end an elongated vane. Unlike many pterosaurs, it had no head crest.
Sordes had, according to Sharov and Unwin, wing membranes attached to the legs and a membrane between the legs.
Sordes has been assigned to the family Rhamphorhynchidae. These were among the earliest of the pterosaurs, evolving in the late
TriassicThe Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 251 to 199 Ma . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...
and surviving to the late
JurassicThe Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Ma to Ma, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the "Age of Reptiles". The start of the period is marked by...
. According to Unwin, within Rhamphorhynchidae
Sordes belonged to the Scaphognathinae. Other researchers however, such as Alexander Kellner and Lü Junchang, have produced cladistic analyses showing that
Sordes was much more basal, lower in the pterosaur evolutionary tree, and not a rhamphorhynchid.
Sordes probably ate small prey, perhaps including insects and amphibians.
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