The complete specimen of Laueropterus.

Yes, it’s new pterosaur time again and indeed it’s another Moernseim non-pterodactyloid monofenestratan. Following on from the description and naming of both Skiphosoura and Makrodactylus, this time out the new name is Laueropterus (Lauer’s wing) in clear honour of René and Bruce Lauer of the Lauer Foundation for their contributions to palaeontological work.

If you are reading this and know their names, it’s probably because of the work I’ve been doing with them on Solnhofen region pterosaurs (not just these taxa but also Petrodactyle, and a paper on soft tissue preservation), but they have a long standing series of collaborations on Solnhofen sharks, other taxa from the area, and Triassic material too. As such, there’s a whole string of both papers and numerous conference abstracts either directly by them, or from people working on their material.

We can argue about the various issues around private purchasing and ownership of fossils, but this material is available for permanent public study. It’s also undeniable that had they not obtained this material, much, probably most, and perhaps even all of it would have languished in private collections in Germany and would not just unavailable for study, but probably completely unknown to academic researchers. As such, they have done an enormous amount to bring this material out into the open. Just for the pterosaurs, we now know of far more taxa than before in the region and, in Skiphosoura in particular, including species with very important contributions to our understanding of pterosaur evolution (and if you saw the poster at SVP, you’ll know there’s still more coming too). In that context, I think naming this new species after them is very much warranted.

Onto the animal itself. In some ways, it’s rather unexciting, being generally similar to both Makrodactylus and Skiphosoura as a likely derived early mononfenestratan that is very close to the origin of the pterodactyloids. In particular it has only a few small caudal vertebrae suggesting this is another short-tailed animal. In its general proportions it is most similar to Skiphosoura, though there are unique features to both as well as various other differences such as a longer and thinner skull, in the tail vertebrae, scapula, humerus and wing metacarpal. Although about half the size, it is close to adult status and so these differences cannot easily be attributed to ontogeny.

Skeletal reconstruction of Laueropterus by Matt Dempsey

The animal is also interesting in terms of its preservation. Like others from the Moernsheim, the specimen is essentially complete while also being disarticulated. But uniquely, the bones are stained a fairly bright orange leading to the nickname of ‘red wing’ when it was first prepared. Also, many of the bones have holes in them which led to the species name ‘vitriolus’ for the acid-like etching of the bones. This is again apparently unique, and I’ve never seen a pterosaur that has this kind of preservation. Talking through this with Melanie Durling, this is interpreted as water seeping into the rocks and dissolving away some of the bones, which would explain why these holes appear in the largest elements that would also therefore be the most prominent and where water would reach first. Perhaps if this specimen was much closer to the surface originally even more of it would have dissolved, which would be a shame given the exceptional quality of the preservation.

Laueropterus also adds more information on the Moernsheim generally with this now being the fourth distinct monofenestratan found (the ‘Rhamphodactylus’ is from here too). Although there are plenty of fish and ammonites at the site, and there is nothing to suggest that these were freshwater, it’s notable that the pterosaurs found are disproportionately those that are considered more terrestrial and the filter feeding ctenochasmatids and pelagic rhamphorhynchines are incredibly rare or unknown (there is supposedly one Rhamphorhynchus from the site, but this is well over half of the finds everywhere else in the region) suggesting that there is something very different about Moernheim and that it is capturing taxa not normally recovered. It very much suggests there are still more species to be found and that through this locality we may see a whole new side to the Solnhofen.

There’s naturally plenty more in the paper, and as it is out in PeerJ, it’s fully open access and you can read the whole thing. I do, of course, want to thank René and Bruce again for all their support and congratulate them on their achievements. I also need to thank Matt Dempsey for doing the skeletal reconstruction for me, and Melanie Durling for conversations about the taphomomy, as well as Denis Theda for help with some of the locality information.

Here’s the full paper if you want to read it: Hone, D.W.E., 2026. A new early monofenestratan pterosaur from the Mörnsheim Formation of southern Germany PeerJ, 21204