Zhejiangopterus

Zhejiangopterus is a genus of azhdarchid pterosaur known from one species, which lived in China during the late Cretaceous Period. The genus was named in 1994 by Chinese paleontologists Cai Zhengquan and Wei Feng. The type species is Zhejiangopterus linhaiensis. The genus name refers to Zhejiang Province and a Latinized Greek pteron, "wing". The specific name refers to the city of Linhai. In 1986 a young chalkstone quarry worker named Xu Chengfa, found a large fossil near the village of Aolicun in Linhai. Xu by letter informed the director of the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History at Hangzhou, Ming Hua, who from it understood the remains were those of an unknown pterosaur. Therefore, he sent a team consisting of the describers and Wu Weitang to investigate. They secured the fossil, instructing the local population to be alert for possible further finds. Xu himself managed to find three more specimens before being killed in an accident in 1988; another worker found a complete skull. In the early 1990s, in total, six larger fossils had been recovered from the Tangshang Formation, an 81.5 million year old layer from the Campanian. Among those was the holotype, ZMNH M1330, the impression of the skull of a juvenile individual. Several paratypes were referred: ZMNH M1325, a skeleton lacking the skull; ZMNH M1328, an almost complete skeleton and ZMNH M1329, a fragmentary skeleton. Zhejiangopterus was a moderately large pterosaur. Its wingspan was first estimated at 5 meters (16.4 feet). Later estimates reduced this to about 3.5 meters (11.5 ft), while its body mass is estimated by pterosaur expert Mark Witton to be around 7.9 kilograms (roughly 17 pounds) based on a volumetric method. Its skull was long, low, perfectly arched, and lacked a "keel" or any other crest sometimes seen in related species. The nasal opening and the large opening typically present between the nose and eye openings of archosaurs (the "antorbital fenestra") had joined together in species such as this to create a single oval opening that occupied nearly one half the length of the skull.

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Related concepts (5)

Timeline of pterosaur research

This timeline of pterosaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, and taxonomic revisions of pterosaurs, the famed flying reptiles of the Mesozoic era. Although pterosaurs went extinct millions of years before humans evolved, humans have coexisted with pterosaur fossils for millennia. Before the development of paleontology as a formal science, these remains would have been interpreted through a mythological lens.

Zhejiangopterus

Arambourgiania

Arambourgiania is an extinct genus of azhdarchid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (Maastrichtian stage) of Jordan, and possibly the United States. Arambourgiania was among the largest members of its family, the Azhdarchidae, and it is also one of the largest flying animals ever known. The incomplete left ulna of the "Sidi Chennane azhdarchid" from Morocco may have also belonged to Arambourgiania. In the early 1940s, a railway worker during repairs on the Amman-Damascus railroad near Russeifa found a two foot long fossil bone.