''Angustinaripterus'' was a basal

pterosaur Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

, belonging to the breviquartossan family

Rhamphorhynchidae Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early pterosaurs named after '' Rhamphorhynchus'', that lived in the Late Jurassic. The family Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study ...

(more specifically within the subfamily

Rhamphorhynchinae Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early pterosaurs named after ''Rhamphorhynchus'', that lived in the Late Jurassic. The family Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study o ...

) and discovered at Dashanpu near

Zigong Zigong ( zh, s=自贡 , ), formed by the merger of the two former towns of Ziliujing (Tzuliuching, literally "self-flow well") and Gongjing (Kungching, literally "offering well"), is a prefecture-level city in Sichuan, Southwestern China. Demo ...

in the

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

province of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Discovery and etymology

''Angustinaripterus'' was named in 1983 by He Xinlu, Yang Daihuan, and Su Chunkang. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

is ''Angustinaripterus longicephalus''. The genus name is derived from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''angustus'', "narrow" and ''naris'', "nostril", combined with Latinized Greek ''pteron'', "wing". The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

is derived from Latin ''longus'', "long", and Greek ''kephale'', "head". The

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

, ZDM T8001, is a single skull with lower jaws, found in 1981 by researchers from the Zigong Historical Museum of the Salt Industry, in an outcrop of the Xiashaximiao Formation (

Bathonian In the geologic timescale the Bathonian is an age (geology), age and stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Middle Jurassic. It lasted from approximately 168.2 ±1.2 annum, Ma to around 165.3 ±1.1 Ma (million years ago). The Bathonian Age succeeds ...

). It is now stored at the

Zigong Dinosaur Museum The Zigong Dinosaur Museum () is located near the city of Zigong, Sichuan, China, in the township of Dashanpu. History The museum sits on top of a large concentration of a diverse dinosaur assemblage from the Shaximiao Formation. The museu ...

Description

The skull of ''Angustinaripterus'', of which the left side is severely damaged, is very elongated and flat. The back part is missing; in its preserved state it has a length of ; the total length in a complete state was estimated at . On its top is a low crest, high. The nares are long, slit-like and positioned above and in front of the large skull openings, the ''fenestrae antorbitales'', with which they are not confluent. Of the jaws, which are very straight, the front part is lacking. There are six pairs of teeth in the

maxilla In vertebrates, the maxilla (: maxillae ) is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxil ...

e and three pairs in the

premaxilla The premaxilla (or praemaxilla) is one of a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw of many animals, usually, but not always, bearing teeth. In humans, they are fused with the maxilla. The "premaxilla" of therian mammals h ...

e. In the

mandible In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone i ...

there are at least ten pairs of teeth, perhaps twelve. The back teeth are small, the front teeth are very long, robust and curved, pointing moderately forward. At the front they form a large, intermeshing "prey grab", that may have been used to snatch fish from the water surface. The teeth of ''Angustinaripterus'' resemble those of ''

Dorygnathus ''Dorygnathus'' ("spear jaw") was a genus of rhamphorhynchid pterosaur that lived in Europe during the Early Jurassic period, when shallow seas flooded much of the continent. It had a short wingspan around , and a relatively small triangular ster ...

''.

Peter Wellnhofer Peter Wellnhofer (born Munich, 1936) is a German paleontologist at the Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie in Munich. He is best known for his work on the various fossil specimens of ''Archaeopteryx'' or "Urvogel", the first known bird. ...

in 1991, assuming the skull length was , estimated the wingspan at .

Classification

He et al. (1983) placed ''Angustinaripterus'' into the family

. Because of the derived morphology and the large geographical distance with comparable European forms, He et al. also created a subfamily Angustinaripterinae, of which '' Angustinaripterus'' itself was the only known member, and concluded that ''Angustinaripterus'' was directly related to the

Scaphognathinae Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early pterosaurs named after ''Rhamphorhynchus'', that lived in the Late Jurassic. The family Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study o ...

. The name Angustinaripterinae, converted to the tribe Angustinaripterini, may also include '' Dearc'' and '' Sericipterus''. The ''cladogram'' (family tree) below is a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

analysis published by paleontologists Brian Andres & Timothy Myers in 2013. They recovered ''Angustinaripterus'' as derived rhamphorhynchine, within the tribe Angustinaripterini, sister taxon to '' Sericipterus''.

References

{{portalbar, Paleontology, China Middle Jurassic pterosaurs of Asia Rhamphorhynchidae Fossil taxa described in 1983

Discovery and etymology

Description

Classification

See also

References