Ctenochasma by theenantiornithebandwagon. Originally going to be it floating in water beside a duck, but they started school and I didn’t want to waste this.
In literature, ctenochasmatoid pterosaurs are often compared to shorebirds. However, I think a much more fitting analogue are ducks for a variety of reasons:
They have proportionally long torsos and large hindfeet, suggesting they were adapted to floating and swimming. Swim tracks attributed to ctenochasmatoids are known (Witton 2013) Many taxa are filter feeders just like ducks, and those that aren’t are still specialised in eating aquatic invertebrates (Bestwick 2020) Pterodaustro has been compared to nocturnal waterfowl (Hall 2011) Some taxa like Pterodaustro might have had some difficulty launching, as the aofrementioned long torso might have been incovenient, and may have only taken off out in wide open spaces (Witton 2013). What do you think?
References
Witton, Mark P. (2013). Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691150613.
Bestwick, J., Unwin, D.M., Butler, R.J. et al. Dietary diversity and evolution of the earliest flying vertebrates revealed by dental microwear texture analysis. Nat Commun 11, 5293 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19022-2
Hall, Margaret I.; Kirk, E. Christopher; Kamilar, Jason M.; Carrano, Matthew T. (2011-12-23). “Comment on “Nocturnality in Dinosaurs Inferred from Scleral Ring and Orbit Morphology””. Science. 334 (6063): 1641–1641. doi:10.1126/science.1208442. ISSN 0036-8075.
