''Puntanipterus'' 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 ...

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

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) La Cruz Formation of San Luis,

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. The genus was in 1975 named by

José Bonaparte José Fernando Bonaparte (14 June 1928 – 18 February 2020) was an Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists . One of the best-known Argentine paleo ...

and

Teresa Sánchez Teresa (also Theresa, Therese; french: Thérèse) is a feminine given name. It originates in the Iberian Peninsula in late antiquity. Its derivation is uncertain, it may be derived from Greek θερίζω (''therízō'') "to harvest or rea ...

. 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 ''Puntanipterus globosus''. The genus name refers to the ''Puntanos'', the colloquial name for the inhabitants of the province of San Luis after the old name of their capital "San Luis de la Punta de los Venados", and combines this with a 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 ...

means "spherical" 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 ...

, a reference to the form of the lower

tibia The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

. It 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 ...

PVL 3869 (earlier FML 3869) found in 1972, a 105 millimetres long

tibiotarsus The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia. A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae. These sm ...

and seven centimetres long

fibula The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...

; referred to it were a back

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

and a wing and foot

phalanx The phalanx ( grc, φάλαγξ; plural phalanxes or phalanges, , ) was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar pole weapons. The term is particularly use ...

. The leg bones were described as similar to those of ''

Pterodaustro ''Pterodaustro'' is a genus of ctenochasmatid pterodactyloid pterosaur from South America. Its fossil remains dated back to the Early Cretaceous period, about 105 million years ago. The most distinctive characteristic that separates ''Pterodaust ...

'' (from slightly younger rocks), except for having an expanded spherical joint at the

ankle The ankle, or the talocrural region, or the jumping bone (informal) is the area where the foot and the leg meet. The ankle includes three joints: the ankle joint proper or talocrural joint, the subtalar joint, and the inferior tibiofibular join ...

and spiny processes on the side faces of the tibia at that end.Bonaparte, J.F., and Sanchez, T.M. (1975). Restos de un pterosaurio ''Puntanipterus globosus'' de la formación La Cruz provincia San Luis, Argentina. ''Actas Primo Congresso Argentino de Paleontologia e Biostratigraphica'' 2:105-113. panish/ref> Bonaparte in 1978 classified ''Puntanipterus'' as a member of the Pterodaustridae. The same year

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. W ...

was more careful and limited his assessment to a Pterodactyloidea ''

incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertainty ...

''. In 1980

Peter Galton Peter Malcolm Galton (born 14 March 1942 in London) is a British vertebrate paleontologist who has to date written or co-written about 190 papers in scientific journals or chapters in paleontology textbooks, especially on ornithischian and prosaur ...

concluded it belonged to 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 ...

. It was still by many considered to be a dsungaripterid by the time Peter Wellnhofer published ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs'' (several editions in the 1990s). However, in the nineties several tibiae conforming to that of ''Puntanipterus'' were found in the same strata as ''Pterodaustro''; a direct comparison is only impossible because more complete specimens of the latter are always very compressed, deforming the ankle morphology; but smaller fragments containing not-compressed ankles all have the build of a ''Puntanipterus'' tibiotarsus. This is by South American workers seen as a strong indication that both forms are identical. Glut reported a personal communication from Laura Codorniú and

Luis Chiappe Luis María Chiappe (born 18 June 1962) is an Argentine paleontologist born in Buenos Aires who is best known for his discovery of the first sauropod nesting sites in the badlands of Patagonia in 1997 and for his work on the origin and early evo ...

(2004) that ''Puntanipterus'' should be regarded as 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 ''Pterodaustro'',Glut, D.F. (2006). ''Pterodaustro'' In: Glut, D.F. ''Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia.'' Supplement 4. McFarland & Company, Inc.: Jefferson, North Carolina, 623-624. . In his book, ''The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time'', Unwin (2006) classified it as a possibly valid species of uncertain relationships.Unwin, D.M. (2006). ''The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time.'' Pi Press:New York, 272-273. https://archive.org/details/The_Pterosaurs_From_Deep_Time_by_David_M._Unwin/page/n275. Codorniu and Gasparini (2007) formally synonymized ''Puntanipterus'' with ''Pterodaustro'' in their overview of pterosaurs from Patagonia.L. Codorniú and Z. Gasparini. 2007. Pterosauria. In Z. Gasparini, L. Salgado, R. A. Coria (eds.), Patagonian Mesozoic Reptiles. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 143-166.

References

External links

''Puntanipterus''
in The Pterosauria {{Portal bar, Paleontology, Cretaceous, Argentina Pterodactyloids Early Cretaceous pterosaurs Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of South America Cretaceous Argentina Fossils of Argentina Fossil taxa described in 1975 Taxa named by José Bonaparte

See also

References

External links