Troll_Man
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WWD: Austriadactylus cristatus
🕑 Added 2023-04-14 05:10:14 +0000 UTCThis is the Peteinosaurus equivalent, a larger primitive pterosaur that is functionally the same role of showing the early evolution of the group. Austriadactylus specifically was picked because it lived slightly closer in time and space to the other species compared to Peteinosaurus (plus it's a little bigger, so it shows up on the chart better). Plus, it has a nice big crest.
One error WWD has for all its pterosaur species is depicting their wings folding bent outward like the wings of an origami crane rather than being tucked tight behind the elbows, although the latter would've been much more difficult for their primitive 90s CGI to model, considering all that membrane folding that would've been necessary (and the series already had periodic issues with model clipping). Another issue was that they kept the pycnofibre coverage to an absolute minimum, with only a few sparse filaments here and there, for probably the same reason; the CGI of the time was not good at rendering hair or feathers.
Another personal nitpick I have with the pterosaurs is most of them have very dull or murky colouration, and nearly all of them are some shade of greyish, as though it were an intentional aesthetic choice to make them seem as primordially old and antediluvian in life as the fossils they became, even though modern reptiles and birds come in a spectacular array of shades and patterns. Peteinosaurus specifically also did not live in the locale of the original episode, as it was found in Italy, not Arizona.
It's thought to be a carnivore, but it's not clear if it ate fish, insects, some other sort of animal prey, or all of the above, but since it takes the place of the insect-eating Peteinosaurus, we'll assume it ate insects, at least sometimes.
