Draigwenia

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Draigwenia
Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, Albian
Ornithocheirus platystomus.jpg
D. platystomus holotype
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Order: Pterosauria
Suborder: Pterodactyloidea
Clade: Lanceodontia
Genus: Draigwenia
Holgado, 2021
Type species
Draigwenia platystomus
Holgado, 2021 (Seeley, 1870)
Synonyms

Draigwenia (meaning "white dragon" from the Welsh ddraig wen, referring to a dragon associated with the Anglo-Saxons) is an extinct genus of pterosaur known from a jaw fragment found in the Late Cretaceous Cambridge Greensand in the United Kingdom. The fossil was likely reworked from an Early Cretaceous layer that can be dated to the Albian. It currently contains a single species, Draigwenia platystomus. [1]

History

The holotype CAMSM B54835, was described in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley as the holotype of his species Ornithocheirus platystomus. In 1914 Reginald Walter Hooley moved O. platystomus to Amblydectes . [2] It was assigned by David Unwin in 2001 to the genus Lonchodectes , [3] and in 2013 was excluded from the Lonchodraconidae. [4] In a 2021 review of the genus Amblydectes , Borja Holgado considered platystomus a valid taxon and gave it its own genus, Draigwenia, reinterpreting it as an indeterminate member of Lanceodontia.

Related Research Articles

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Ornithocheirus is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the UK and possibly Morocco.

<i>Tropeognathus</i> Genus of anhanguerid pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous

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<i>Amblydectes</i> Extinct genus of reptiles

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The Cambridge Greensand is a geological unit in England whose strata are earliest Cenomanian in age. It lies above the erosive contact between the Gault Formation and the Chalk Group in the vicinity of Cambridgeshire, and technically forms the lowest member bed of the West Melbury Marly Chalk Formation. It is a remanié deposit, containing reworked fossils of late Albian age, including those of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

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Cimoliopterus is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now England and the United States. The first known specimen, consisting of the front part of a snout including part of a crest, was discovered in the Grey Chalk Subgroup of Kent, England, and described as the new species Pterodactylus cuvieri in 1851. The specific name cuvieri honours the palaeontologist George Cuvier, whereas the genus Pterodactylus was then used for many pterosaur species that are not thought to be closely related today. It was one of the first pterosaurs to be depicted as models in Crystal Palace Park in the 1850s. The species was subsequently assigned to various other genera, including Ornithocheirus and Anhanguera. In 2013, the species was moved to a new genus, as Cimoliopterus cuvieri; the generic name Cimoliopterus is derived from the Greek words for "chalk" and "wing". Other specimens and species have also been assigned to or synonymised with the species with various levels of certainty. In 2015, a snout discovered in the Britton Formation of Texas, US, was named as a new species in the genus, C. dunni; the specific name honours its collector, Brent Dunn.

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<i>Serradraco</i> Genus of pteranodontoid pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous

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<i>Nicorhynchus</i> Genus of anhanguerid pterosaur from the Cretaceous period

Nicorhynchus is a genus of anhanguerid pterosaur from the Cretaceous period. It contains two species, the type species, N. capito, from the Cambridge Greensand of England, and N. fluviferox from the Kem Kem Group of Morocco. These species were previously assigned to Coloborhynchus.

<i>Aerodraco</i> Genus of anhanguerid pterosaur from the Cretaceous period

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References

  1. Holgado, Borja (2021-12-03). "On the validity of the genus Amblydectes Hooley 1914 (Pterodactyloidea, Anhangueridae) and the presence of Tropeognathinae in the Cambridge Greensand". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências. 93. doi:10.1590/0001-3765202120201658. ISSN   0001-3765.
  2. Hooley, Reginald Walter (1914). "On the Ornithosaurian genus Ornithocheirus, with a review of the specimens from the Cambridge Greensand in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 13 (78): 529–557. doi:10.1080/00222931408693521. ISSN   0374-5481.
  3. Unwin D.M., (2001), "An overview of the pterosaur assemblage from the Cambridge Greensand (Cretaceous) of Eastern England", Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe 4: 189–221
  4. Rodrigues, T.; Kellner, A. (2013). "Taxonomic review of the Ornithocheirus complex (Pterosauria) from the Cretaceous of England". ZooKeys (308): 1–112. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.308.5559 . PMC   3689139 . PMID   23794925.