Bennett—Smallest Pteranodon
feeding in aquatic environments, and the same may have been true of Rhamphorhynchus with jaws and teeth suited to spearing fishes. Butmany other pterosaurs had skulls, dentitions, and other features that would not have prevented them from succeeding in terrestrial environments, particularly as juveniles with usually somewhat more generalized morphologies (e.g., Dimorphodon, Scaphognathus, Anhanguera, Pteranodon). Therefore, it is not unreasonable to think that some pterosaurs may have exhibited ontogenetic niches such that they lived in terrestrial and aquatic environments at different times in their lives. There is nothing in the morphology of Sericipterus and Kryptodrakon (Andres et al., 2010, 2014) to distinguish them from pterosaurs found in aquatic environments; indeed, the dentition of Sericipterus has long slender teeth like those of its relatives Scaphognathus and Rhamphorhynchus found in aquatic environments. Thus, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there was a dichotomy between terrestrial and aquatic pterosaurs.
Acknowledgments
I thank G. Rockers for donating the juvenile specimen to the FHSM, and A. Averianov and L. Codorniú for providing me with information about the ontogenetic compositions of collec- tions of Azhdarcho and Pterodaustro, respectively. A.T. Karlin assisted with thin sectioning. Constructive reviews from M. Witton and L. Codorniú led to improvements in the manu- script, and an anonymous reviewer disagreed with everything. A platform presentation by D. Fowler (Fowler et al., 2013) brought the idea of ontogenetic niches to my attention and led to the immediate realization that most pterosaurs exhibit them.
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