PONE-D-20-38270

Osteology of an exceptionally well-preserved tapejarid skeleton from Brazil: revealing the anatomy of a curious pterodactyloid clade

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr. Beccari,

Thanks for choosing PLOS ONE as the venue to publish your research!

We have now secured two revisions for your manuscript. Sorry for the delay, but it was hard to find suitable reviewers along the passage of the year.

Both reviewers are generally happy with the MS, so I ask you to consider all the modifications they suggest (accept or reply to them accordingly) and proceed so submit a revised version of the manuscript.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Max Cardoso Langer

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Review of “Osteology of an exceptionally well-preserved tapejarid skeleton from Brazil: revealing the anatomy of a curious pterodactyloid clade” by Victoer Beccari and colleagues.

The paper describes in detail anatomy of a remarkable complete and well preserved skeleton with remains of soft tissues of the tapejarid pterosaur Tupandactylus navigans from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil. The paper is certainly an important contribution to our understanding of pterosaurs and should be published after minor revision. The paper is generally well written although English needs improvement. I have only few comments to the paper which are introduced in the attached pdf file of the paper.

Alexander Averianov

Reviewer #2: See the attached marked-up document for full details and comments. Fundamentally the paper is fine but there are a few areas that I think can be improved and would make it much stronger.

Needs comparisons to other specimens of this species.

An interpretative drawing of the skull here and in comparison to other Tupandactylus species would be very useful.

Why not code multiple specimens of the species into the analysis?

The ontogeny section needs to be cleared up.

The ecological section is poorly referenced and contains many unsupported ideas.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Alexander Averianov

Reviewer #2: Yes: David Hone

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-38270_AA.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-38270_reviewer.pdf

PONE-D-20-38270R1

Osteology of an exceptionally well-preserved tapejarid skeleton from Brazil: revealing the anatomy of a curious pterodactyloid clade

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Beccari,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. I have now evaluated its revised version on the light of the suggestions provided by the two reviewers. I understand that you gave adequate answer to most of their comments, so that we not need to go through a second round of revisions.

Nevertheless, I would like to add some editorial suggestion to the text. This is attached using the modified MS file you provided, in which I have accepted all of your modifications and further included (using track-changes) my suggestions. Please, either accept them or provide a justification for not doing so.

There are also some other minor aspects I would like to highlight, see "Additional Editor Comments" below.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 06 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Max Cardoso Langer

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

1 - Abbreviation of generic names and citation of species:

Please, always provide the full species name (not only the generic epithet) if this is known (otherwise use “sp.”). As for the abbreviation of the generic epithet, this is fine and welcome, but has to be patronised. So, use a full-word epithet in the first time the species is mentioned in the abstract and in the main text; after that, always use the abbreviation (unless it is the first work of a sentence). As for generic epithets starting with the same set of letters, the abbreviation has to include a minimal number of letters enough to differentiate them (e.g., Tupu. and Tupa. for Tupuxuara and Tupandactylus). I attempted to change all such cases in the MS, but please give a second look.

2 – Phylogenetic analysis:

This needs additional information for clarity and, depending on the decision of the authors, also some implementations of the analysis itself.

You wrote, “The phylogenetic position of Tupa. navigans was accessed through the scoring of GP/2E 9266 using the character-taxon matrix of Hone et al. (2020)”. As far as I could follow, this was based on Kellner et al. (2019), which was based on Holgado et al. (2019), which was based on Vullo et al. (2012), which was based on many sources. What is important to mention is [1] on what basis was Tupa. navigans scored on those previous matrices (which specimens, by which authors), and [2] if you just complemented their codification with new data from GP/2E 9266 or if you employed a completely de novo codification based only on GP/2E 9266. It seems that the latter was the case, if so, you have to clearly state if your codification is totally congruent with the previous codification of Tupa. navigans (i.e., no character was scored differently between yours and previous codifications). If this is not the case, you should consider including GP/2E 9266 as an OUT independent from Tupa. navigans (as previously scored) in those matrices; show and discuss the results. I see that this is briefly discussed in the “Phylogenetic Analysis” (apparently saying that the codifications are the same), but this needs to be clearly stated in the “M&M”, beforehand.

You also wrote, “The second phylogenetic analysis included the specimen MN 6588-V as a separate OTU”. Firstly, you have to mention this second analysis in the “M&M” section. Secondly, it is unclear from the sentence above if MN 6588-V was previously included in the data sets as part of a given OUT or if the specimen was never considered in those data sets. You have to make this point clear.

Finally, you mention that the tree in Fig. 15B is a “reduced strict-consensus tree”. You have to explain how this reduced consensus tree was built in the “M&M” and then provide more detailed results, e.g., which taxa were excluded and how.

3 – Tables:

Please, do not provide them within the main text, but each in a separate file formatted and labelled accordingly.

4 – You wrote, “MN 6588-V can be regarded as Tupandactylus sp. due to the similarities to the postcranial material of GP/2E 9266”. Question: why not to Tupa. navigans, considering that GP/2E 9266 belongs to that species? In order to state that it belongs to the genus, but not to either of its species, you would have to say (if this is the case) that it does not preserve the putative differences between both species. If this is not the case, perhaps you can define the species of MN 6588-V. In any case, further explanation are needed here. See also if this leads to modifications in the conclusion.

5 – Comments by Dr. David Hone

Three comments by reviewer Dr. David Hone were not clearly tacked in the modified MS. Please respond to these queries: [1] about the hook-like structure of the rhamphotheca, Dr. Hone asked “I don't understand this at all. It doesn't look like it is hooked and I do not know how a 'peg' would operate. Please explain.”; [2] In the sentence “wing phalanges length compared to the inner-wing length in GP/2E 9266 is comparatively short” Dr. Hone asked for companions; [3] About the sentence “Frey and colleagues argued that, in order to have an aerodynamically functional crest … ”, Dr. Hone also commented that “they assume crests were functional which is very unlikely (see Hone et al. 2010). If crests were functional we'd expect them to converge on a very small number of forms, instead they show very high diversity which is a signature of socio-sexually structures”. Please respond to his query.

Max

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Revised Manuscript with Track Changes mclanger.docx

Osteology of an exceptionally well-preserved tapejarid skeleton from Brazil: revealing the anatomy of a curious pterodactyloid clade

PONE-D-20-38270R2

Dear Dr. Beccari,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

At this time, please also include the three minor changes requested by the editor (see below)

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Kind regards,

Max Cardoso Langer

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Only three minor changes:

Line 110: change “differed GP/2E 9266 scoring” for “differed from the scoring of GP/2E 9266”

Line 122: delete “The reduced tree consists of the clade Tapejarinae.” (see below)

Line 897: change “Strict-consensus tree recovered from the phylogenetic analysis (A) and reduced strict consensus tree recovered including specimen MN 6588-V (B)” for “Strict-consensus tree recovered from the first phylogenetic analysis (A) and including specimen MN 6588-V, showing only Tapejaridae clade (B)”. Otherwise, it gives the impression that you built a reduced-consensus tree.