Your Daily Dinosaur: Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Detailed Drawing of A Long Tailed Pterosaur; Before They Were “Discovered” By Science

by Chris Parker

Ulisse Aldrovandi (also Aldrovandus) was born in 1522 and died in 1605. He is sometimes referred to as the father of natural history studies. By profession he was a professor of philosophy but eventually became one of the first professors of the natural sciences at Bologna.

Ulisse died 250 years before the first pterosaur was "discovered" by a "modern" scientist. This first pterosaur fossil was described by the Italian naturalist Cosimo Collini in 1784. Collini misinterpreted his specimen as a seagoing creature that used its long front limbs as paddles. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that science realized that pterosaurs were flying creatures.

A few scientists continued to support the aquatic interpretation even until 1830, when the German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler suggested that Pterodactylus used its wings as flippers. Georges Cuvier first suggested that pterosaurs were flying creatures in 1801, and coined the name “Ptero-dactyle” in 1809 for the specimen recovered in Germany.” …Wikipedia

After Aldrovandi’s death his book Serpentum, et draconum historiæ Serpentum, et Draconum was published. In it, was a drawing supposedly from life, of a dragon which comports very well with a long tailed, crested pterosaur especially given that Aldrovandi was a philosopher and naturalist –and not an artist.

The interesting thing about Aldrovandi’s pterosaur is that it has the crest of the pteranodon and the tail of one of the long tailed rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. Although we don’t know this exact pterosaur from science it closely matches modern day eyewitness descriptions and drawings of a long tailed pterosaur. (There are long tail crested pterosaurs known to science but none with the classic bone sticking out the back of its head).

Note what might look like another set of small wings at the legs of Aldrovandi’s dragon. That is called the uropatagium; and since it does not appear on birds it is one indication that Aldrovandi actually saw a pterosaur.

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