''Moganopterus'' is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
genus of
ctenochasmatid pterosaur 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 ...
of western
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 ...
,
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 ...
.
Discovery and naming
The fossil of ''Moganopterus'' was discovered at the village of Xiaosanjiazi near the town of
Lamadong 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 ...
. In 2012 it was named and described by
Lü Junchang,
Pu Hanyong, Xu Li,
Wu Yanhua and
Wei Xuefang as the
type species ''Moganopterus zhuiana''. The generic name is derived from the legendary sword couple
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye
Gan Jiang () and Mo Ye () were a swordsmith couple, discussed in the literature involving the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. Some aspects of this material may be considered historical; others are certainly mythological. A pair of sw ...
, in reference to the blade-like jaws, and a Latinized Greek πτερόν, ''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 ...
honors Ms. Zhu Haifen, who made the specimen available to science.
[
The holotype, 41HIII0419, was uncovered in a layer of the Yixian Formation, dating from the ]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 ...
, about 125 million years old. It consists of an almost complete skull with lower jaws and the second to fourth neck vertebrae. The fossil is compressed on a slab and counterslab, the splitting of the two plates having damaged some bones. The specimen is part of the collection of the Geological Museum of Henan.[
]
Description
''Moganopterus'' is a large pterosaur. The skull has a preserved length of about and the longest preserved neck vertebra, the fourth, a length of . The skull is the largest known of any toothed pterosaur. The size of skull and neck indicates a wingspan of about 7 meters (23 ft), making ''Moganopterus'' one of the largest known pterosaurs.[ However, the maximum wingspan was reduced to in the redescription of the holotype by Gao et al. (2022).][
''Moganopterus'' shows an extreme elongation of the upper and lower jaws. The back of the skull is just high and its top gradually descends towards the pointed snout tip. On the front of the snout, a low triangular crest is present, measuring long and tall. The profile of the skull is continued by a narrow crest sticking out at the back, similar to '']Pteranodon
''Pteranodon'' (); from Ancient Greek (''pteron'', "wing") and (''anodon'', "toothless") is a genus of pterosaur that included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with ''P. longiceps'' having a wingspan of . They lived during the late Cr ...
''. It is unknown whether this crest was flat or rod-like; its length cannot be determined because it reaches the edge of the slabs. The lower jaws, lacking a keel, have a length of . They are about as tall as the snout and have a pointed tip.[
The jaws are lined with long conical pointed teeth, up to in length, slightly recurved and more or less oriented vertically. The describers estimated there were fifteen teeth in the upper jaw and seventeen in the lower jaw for a total of sixty-four, which closely matches the number of sixty-two actually found. The teeth rows stretch from the very front of the head until the back edge of the ''fenestra nasoantorbitalis''. They are associated with oblique cellular structures visible in the bone of the upper and lower jaws, the nature of which has not been determined. Hollow structures, reinforced by struts, can also be seen in the parietal crest and the vertebrae. The fourth cervical is 7.25 times as long as it is tall.][
]
Phylogeny
In 2012, ''Moganopterus'' was assigned to the Boreopteridae, forming a Moganopterinae with its sister taxon '' Feilongus''.[
Below is a cladogram from Lü ''et al.'' (2012). Only taxa that nest within Ornithocheiroidea are shown.][
Cladogram following Longrich, Martill, and Andres, 2018, in which they place ''Moganopterus'' within the Ctenochasmatidae instead of the Boreopteridae:]
See also
* List of pterosaur genera
* Timeline of pterosaur research
References
{{Portal bar, Paleontology, Cretaceous, China
Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia
Fossil taxa described in 2012
Ctenochasmatoids
Yixian fauna
Taxa named by Lü Junchang