On his blog “Archosaur Musings”, David Hone has an excellent post about the newly described pterosaur Laueropterus, which was named for the Bruce and Rene’ Lauer of the Lauer Foundation. Bruce and Rene’ are long time ESCONI members. They do extraordinary work in Paleontology, Science, and Education. Their work and accomplishments have been featured many times on our website. Pictured below are René and Bruce with Andrew Young at the 2025 ESCONI Holiday Party.

I’ll let David speak for the Lauers and describe the new pterosaur.

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.

The full paper is available on PeerJ… Hone, D.W.E., 2026. A new early monofenestratan pterosaur from the Mörnsheim Formation of southern Germany PeerJ, 21204. There’s some great photos and this reconstruction of the animal by Matt Dempsey.

Abstract

A number of new early monofenestratan pterosaurs have recently been described from the Late Jurassic Mörnsheim Formation of Southern Germany, greatly expanding our knowledge of the diversity and evolution of this group. Here, another new taxon from this grade is described and named from the formation: Laueropterus vitriolus gen. et sp. nov. The animal is represented by a near complete and well-preserved adult individual that is mostly disarticulated. The species has a large wingspan compared to other members of the grade of c. one m. In a series of limestone beds with distinct preservation and taphonomy compared to the ‘traditional’ Solnhofen archipelago, the animal provides increasing evidence of a later fauna in the region that is dominated by early monofenestratans.