''Kariridraco'' is a genus of

tapejarid Tapejaridae (from a Tupi word meaning "the old being") are a family of pterodactyloid pterosaurs from the Cretaceous period. Members are currently known from Brazil, England, Hungary, Morocco, Spain, the United States, and China. The most primiti ...

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 ...

-aged

Romualdo Formation The Romualdo Formation is a geologic Konservat-Lagerstätte in northeastern Brazil's Araripe Basin where the states of Pernambuco, Piauí and Ceará come together. The geological formation, previously designated as the Romualdo Member of the Sa ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The genus contains a single species, ''Kariridraco dianae''..

Discovery and naming

Local workers in

Ceará Ceará (, pronounced locally as or ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the ...

at some unknown location collected a

concretion A concretion is a hard, compact mass of matter formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles, and is found in sedimentary rock or soil. Concretions are often ovoid or spherical in shape, although irregular ...

containing the back of the skull of a pterosaur. To enhance its value, they glued the snout of another specimen to the front of the skull. Ultimately, they donated the find to the ''Museu de Paleontologia Plácido Cidade Nuvens''. Before his death in 2016, Nuvens let other experts study the concretion. The falsification was then discovered. They concluded that the fossil represented a species new to science. There were no indications that the snout belonged to the same species. The new genus and species ''Kariridraco dianae'' was named and described in 2021, by Gabriela M. Cerqueira, Mateus A.C. Santos, Maikon F. Marks, Juliana Manso Sayão and Felipe Lima Pinheiro, based on the holotype MPSC R 1056, a fairly complete skull, including the lower jaws, and the first four neck vertebrae. The generic name refers to the Kariri people of the

Araripe Plateau The Chapada do Araripe, also known as the Serra do Araripe, is a ''chapada'' (plateau) in northeastern Brazil. The chapada forms the boundary of Ceará and Pernambuco states, and forms the watershed between the Jaguaribe River of Ceará, which flow ...

, while the specific name refers to Diana Prince, alter ego of the DC Comics superheroine

Wonder Woman Wonder Woman is a superhero created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston (pen name: Charles Moulton), and artist Harry G. Peter. Marston's wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, Elizabeth, and their life partner, Olive Byr ...

Description

The lower jaws have a preserved length of 205 millimetres. Two distinguishing traits were established. They are

autapomorphies In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

, unique derived characters. The premaxillary snout crest makes an angle of about 45° with the

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates 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 t ...

. The

lacrimal bone The lacrimal bone is a small and fragile bone of the facial skeleton; it is roughly the size of the little fingernail. It is situated at the front part of the medial wall of the orbit. It has two surfaces and four borders. Several bony landmarks of ...

has a deep excavation pointing to the front.

Phylogeny

Cerqueira ''et al.'' performed a phylogenetic analysis and placed ''Kariridraco'' in the

Thalassodrominae Thalassodrominae or Thalassodromidae (meaning "sea runners", due to previous misconceptions of skimming behavior; they are now thought to be terrestrial predators) is a group of azhdarchoid pterosaurs from the Cretaceous period. Its traditional ...

, which, like many recent studies, is recovered as a subfamily of the family

Tapejaridae Tapejaridae (from a Tupi word meaning "the old being") are a family of pterodactyloid pterosaurs from the Cretaceous period. Members are currently known from Brazil, England, Hungary, Morocco, Spain, the United States, and China. The most primiti ...

. Their cladogram is shown below:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q108551717 Taxa described in 2021 Azhdarchoids Pterosaurs Fossil taxa described in 2021