''Lonchognathosaurus'' 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 ...

dsungaripterid Dsungaripteridae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They were robust pterosaurs with good terrestrial abilities and flight honed for inland settings. Classification In 1964 Young created a family to place the recentl ...

pterodactyloid Pterodactyloidea (derived from the Greek words ''πτερόν'' (''pterón'', for usual ''ptéryx'') "wing", and ''δάκτυλος'' (''dáktylos'') "finger" meaning "winged finger", "wing-finger" or "finger-wing") is one of the two traditional ...

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

Albian The Albian is both an age of the geologic timescale and a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early/Lower Cretaceous Epoch/Series. Its approximate time range is 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma to 100.5 ± 0.9 M ...

-age

Lower Cretaceous Lower may refer to: *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Lower Wick is a small hamlet located in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is situated about five miles south west of Dursley, eight ...

Lianmuqin Formation The Lianmuqin Formation, also transcribed as Lianmugin Formation,

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

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 2004 by Michael Maisch, Andreas Matzke and Sun Ge. The

type species In 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 species that contains the biological type specimen ...

is ''Lonchognathosaurus acutirostris''. The genus name is derived from Greek , "lance", , "jaw" and , "lizard", in reference to the fact that it is a reptile with pointed jaws. 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 ...

means "needle snout" in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. ''Lonchognathosaurus'' 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 ...

SGP 2001/19, found near Urumqi in the southern

Junggar Basin The Junggar Basin () is one of the largest sedimentary basins in Northwest China. It is located in Xinjiang, and enclosed by the Tarbagatai Mountains of Kazakhstan in the northwest, the Altai Mountains of Mongolia in the northeast, and the Heaven ...

, the front portion of a skull and lower jaws that came from a large individual; the estimated length of the complete skull was about 400 mm (15.75 in). The point of the upper jaw, composed of 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 mammal has b ...

bones, was slender and had a needle-like tip. The

teeth A tooth ( : teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tear ...

of the upper jaw appeared far back of the tip, and were well-spaced, diminishing in size from front to back; they ended again in front of the nostrils. They were placed in tooth-sockets that had a low bony ridge but were not otherwise elevated from the jaw. Each

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 ...

only had eight teeth, and the bottom margin of the upper jaw was straight (unlike in other pterosaurs where it is strongly curved). A

sagittal The sagittal plane (; also known as the longitudinal plane) is an anatomical plane that divides the body into right and left sections. It is perpendicular to the transverse and coronal planes. The plane may be in the center of the body and divid ...

crest was present, with grooves and a

concave Concave or concavity may refer to: Science and technology * Concave lens * Concave mirror Mathematics * Concave function, the negative of a convex function * Concave polygon, a polygon which is not convex * Concave set * The concavity In ca ...

leading margin. The genus was, after a

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, classified as a member of the

Dsungaripteridae Dsungaripteridae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They were robust pterosaurs with good terrestrial abilities and flight honed for inland settings. Classification In 1964 Young created a family to place the recentl ...

, as the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

to ''

Dsungaripterus ''Dsungaripterus'' is a genus of dsungaripterid pterosaur with an average wingspan of . ''Dsungaripterus'' lived during the Early Cretaceous in what is now China, and its first fossil was found in the Junggar Basin. Description ''Dsungaripter ...

''.Maisch, M.W., Matzke, A.T., and Ge Sun. (2004). A new dsungaripteroid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of the southern Junggar Basin, north-west China. ''Cretaceous Research'' 25:625-634. According to

Brian Andres Brian (sometimes spelled Bryan in English) is a male given name of Irish and Breton origin, as well as a surname of Occitan origin. It is common in the English-speaking world. It is possible that the name is derived from an Old Celtic word meani ...

''Lonchognathosaurus'' is a

junior synonym The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linna ...

of ''Dsungaripterus weii''. David Hone on the other hand, argued in 2017 that the species could not be distinguished from ''

Noripterus ''Noripterus'' (meaning "lake wing" from Mongolian ''nuur'', "lake" and Greek ''pteron'', "wing") is a genus of dsungaripterid pterodactyloid pterosaur from Lower Cretaceous-age Lianmuqin Formation in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, China. It was ...

''. However, in 2021, postcranial elements referrable to ''Lonchognathosaurus'', confirming the validity of the genus and providing new information on the anatomy of this pterosaur, were described from the Lower Cretaceous

Lianmuqin Formation The Lianmuqin Formation, also transcribed as Lianmugin Formation,

(China) by Augustin ''et al.''. Averianov ''et al''., (2022) described a distal fragment of the wing metacarpal from the Lower Cretaceous

Ilek Formation The Ilek Formation is a Lower Cretaceous geologic formation in Western Siberia. Many different fossils have been recovered from the formation. It overlies the Late Jurassic Tyazhin Formation and underlies the Albian Kiya Formation. The formation ...

in West

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and identified it as "nearly identical to the wing metacarpal of ''Lonchognathosaurus acutirostris.''"

References

External links

''Lonchognathosaurus''
in The Pterosauria {{Portal bar, Paleontology, Cretaceous, China Dsungaripterids Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2004

See also

References

External links