Skye McDavid, January 3, 2025
Here is my reconstruction of the skull of Angustinaripterus longicephalus, and with the body.
The body is based on Rhamphorhynchus. While it's highly probable that Angustinaripterus would have had a tail vane, we have no idea what it would have looked like so I gave it Rhamphorhynchus' tail vane.
Now, if you think that the anterior part of my Angustinaripterus skull reconstruction looks similar to Wellnhofer's reconstruction, that's intentional. I think Wellnhofer's reconstruction is quite good. The main difference between my reconstruction of the skull and others is the way in which the supratemporal fenestra is illustrated. This isn't so much a question of what it looks like as a question of how to illustrate something, and how illustration choices can affect people's perception of the anatomy. The supratemporal fenestra in pterosaurs appears approximately elliptical in dorsolateral view, and for the purposes of simplicity, is often illustrated as being approximately elliptical in lateral view. This is an illustration choice, but one that has consequences. When I visited the Smithsonian collections recently I stumbled upon this alongside a Dsungaripterus head on a stick. (Link to an archived copy of someone else's photo because of museum photo policies.) The supratemporal fenestra is reconstructed as being entirely on the lateral side of the skull with solid bone on the dorsal side, when in reality it should be mostly open on the dorsal side. This is why when I illustrated the posterior skulls of a handful of non-monofenestratan pterosaurs for my recent paper with Dave Hone redescribing the largest specimen of Rhamphorhynchus, I was careful to show them as more slit-like in lateral view. So if you're illustrating something, don't just think about what it looks like to you: think about how people will interpret your illustration.
And yes, if you're wondering, yes, I did illustrate this for the paper first, then go down a rabbit hole on non-monofenestran supratemporal fenestrae, then decided to do a full reconstruction of the skull of Angustinaripterus.
He X, Yang D, Su C (1983) A new pterosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Dashanpu, Zigong, Sichuan. Journal of the Chengdu College of Geology Supplement 1: 27-33.
Hone DWE & McDavid SN (2025) A giant specimen of Rhamphorhynchus muensteri with comments on the ontogeny of rhamphorhynchines. PeerJ 13:e18587 http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.18587
Wellnhofer P (1991) The illustrated encyclopedia of pterosaurs. Crescent Books.