''Beipiaopterus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

ctenochasmatid Ctenochasmatidae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They are characterized by their distinctive teeth, which are thought to have been used for filter-feeding. Ctenochasmatids lived from the Late Jurassic to the Early C ...

pterosaur Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is 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 to ...

from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Pro ...

period (

Aptian The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ago), a ...

stage) of what is now the

Yixian Formation The Yixian Formation (; formerly transcribed as Yihsien Formation) is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that spans the late Barremian and early Aptian stages of the Early Cretaceous. It is known for its ex ...

of the

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The genus was named in 2003 by

Lü Junchang Lü Junchang (; 1965 – 9 October 2018) was a Chinese palaeontologist and professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. An expert on Mesozoic reptiles, he described and named dozens of dinosaur and pterosaur taxa ...

. The generic name is derived from

Beipiao City Beipiao () is a city in Chaoyang prefecture, Liaoning province, in Northeast China. It has a population of 202,807. The main industry in the area is coal mining. With vertical shafts of almost 1000m, these are some of the deepest coal mines in ...

Liaoning Province Liaoning () is a coastal provinces of China, province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and i ...

and a Latinized Greek ''pteron'', "wing". The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

honors paleontologist Professor Chen Peiji. The type and only species is based on

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

BPM 0002, a crushed partial skeleton of a subadult individual on a slab, missing the skull. It includes four cervical, fourteen dorsal, three sacral and nine caudal vertebrae, a complete left wing and two hind limbs. Remains of the soft parts have been preserved, including partial wing membranes, a membrane attached to the tibia, a "mane" on the neck and webbing of the feet. It had a wingspan of , and the animal itself had a length of about , however, this is only if the skull had the same length as the remainder of the body: for the neck, ten centimetres for the rump and for the tail. In the wing finger the fourth, normally most extreme, phalanx was absent; according to Lü this was not an artifact of preservation but the normal condition of the animal, one also known from ''

Nyctosaurus ''Nyctosaurus'' (meaning "night lizard" or "bat lizard") is a genus of nyctosaurid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period of what is now the Niobrara Formation of the mid-western United States, which, during the time ''Nyctosaurus'' was alive ...

''. In 2005 a study of the wing membrane by SEM ( scanning electron microscope) was published, showing it had contained many blood vessels, which indicated a role in the

thermoregulation Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...

.Lü J.-C., Kobayashi Y., Yuan C., Ji S., and Ji Q., 2005, "SEM Observation of the Wing Membrane of ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'' (Pterosauria)". ''Acta Geologica Sinica'' 79:6 766–769.

Classification

Lü assigned ''Beipiaopterus'' to the Ctenochasmatidae because of the elongation of the cervical vertebrae and the general form of the humerus. This was later affirmed by an exact

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

analysis which showed that it was a basal member of the group. In 2018, Longrich, Martill and Andres recovered ''Beipiaopterus'' within the tribe

Pterodaustrini Ctenochasmatidae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They are characterized by their distinctive teeth, which are thought to have been used for filter-feeding. Ctenochasmatids lived from the Late Jurassic to the Early C ...

, meaning that it was placed in a derived position within the Ctenochasmatidae, which contradicts its placement as a basal member.Longrich, N.R., Martill, D.M., and Andres, B. (2018)
Late Maastrichtian pterosaurs from North Africa and mass extinction of Pterosauria at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
''PLoS Biology'', 16(3): e2001663.

References

Notes

*Lü J-C. and Wang X-L. 2001. "Soft tissue in an Early Cretaceous pterosaur from Liaoning Province, China". ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'' 21 (supplement to 3): 74A. *Lü J-C. 2002. "Soft tissue in an Early Cretaceous pterosaur from Liaoning Province, China". ''Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum'' 1: 19– 28. *Lü J.-C., 2003, "A new pterosaur: ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'', gen. et sp. nov. (Reptilia: Pterosauria) from Western Liaoning Province, China". ''Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum'' 2: 153–160. *Lü J.-C., Kobayashi Y., Yuan C., Ji S., and Ji Q., 2005, "SEM Observation of the Wing Membrane of ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'' (Pterosauria)". ''Acta Geologica Sinica'' 79:6 766–769. {{Portal bar, Paleontology, Cretaceous, China Late Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia Ctenochasmatoids Fossil taxa described in 2003 Yixian fauna Taxa named by Lü Junchang

Classification

See also

References

Notes