Digimorph, An NSF Digital Library at UT Austin, Texas
help
DigiMorph
Browse the Library by:
 Scientific Names
 Common Names
 What's Popular?
Learn More
Overview Pages
A Production of

Pteropus lylei, Lyle's Flying Fox
Dr. Norberto P. Giannini - Universidad Nacional de Tucumán
T.E. Macrini, J.R. Wible, T.B. Rowe and N.B. Simmons
Pteropus lylei
Click for help
skull
Click for more information

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH 237593)

Image processing: Mr. Stephen Roberson
Image processing: Dr. Ted Macrini
Publication Date: 15 Nov 2005

ITIS TNS Google MSN

This page serves supplemental imagery for a paper entitled The internal nasal skeleton of the bat Pteropus lylei K. Andersen, 1908 (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae, by N.P. Giannini, T.E. Macrini, J.R. Wible, T.B. Rowe and N.B. Simmons (2012, Annals of Carnegie Museum, 81, 1-17). The abstract is as follows:

The cranial osteology of the megachiropteran Pteropus Brisson, 1762, was the subject of recent study that covered all of the skull bones in significant detail, except for the anatomy of the nasal capsule. Here, we describe and illustrate the internal nasal skeleton of Pteropus lylei K. Andersen, 1908, using histological sections of a fetus and high resolution X-ray computed tomographic (HRXCT) imagery of an adult specimen. The internal nasal skeleton of Pteropus lacks a rostral nasoturbinal and includes a caudal nasoturbinal that corresponds to the ossified crista semicircularis of the fetus; three endoturbinals; one ectoturbinal; the maxilloturbinal; and a low basal crest that may represent a rudimentary element. We describe in detail the structure and connections of these elements in Pteropus. The maxilloturbinal is the largest element. In cross section, the caudal nasoturbinal is unilaminar, the maxilloturbinal is double bilaminar (i.e., each of the basal twin laminae splits further into two secondary laminae), and the other elements range from incipient to asymmetrically double bilaminar (i.e., one branch simple, the other split). All turbinals of the ethmoidal labyrinth contribute to the cribriform plate, creating a specific pattern of cribriform foramina. The elements found in Pteropus are compared with those of other well-known mammals with relatively few turbinal elements, including other bats, primates, canids, and marsupials. We show that, despite terminological discrepancies across studies, homologies are straightforward to establish among these taxa and so comparative or phylogenetic studies may benefit from inclusion of turbinal characters.

About the Species

This specimen (AMNH 237593) was made available to the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Nancy Simmons of the American Museum of Natural History. Funding for image processing was provided by a National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Timothy Rowe of The University of Texas at Austin.

Right lateral view of skull

Dorsal view of skull

Ventral view of skull

About this Specimen

This specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 29 April 2005 along the coronal axis for a total of 1475 slices, each slice 0.04465 mm thick with an interslice spacing of 0.04465 mm.

About the
Scan

Links

Photos of flying foxes on The Animal Diversity Web (The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology).

Literature
& Links
turbinals pitch movie

Click on the thumbnail to the left for a pitch animation (1.8 mb) of the Pteropus turbinals.

turbinals pitch movie

Click on the thumbnail to the left for a roll animation (2.4 mb) of the Pteropus turbinals.

turbinals yaw movie

Click on the thumbnail to the left for a yaw animation (2.0 mb) of the Pteropus turbinals.

Additional
Imagery

To cite this page: Dr. Norberto P. Giannini, T.E. Macrini, J.R. Wible, T.B. Rowe and N.B. Simmons, 2005, "Pteropus lylei" (On-line), Digital Morphology. Accessed April 25, 2024 at http://digimorph.org/specimens/Pteropus_lylei/.

©2002-20019 - UTCT/DigiMorph Funding by NSF
Comments