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Concept
Lonchodraco
Résumé
Lonchodraco is a genus of lonchodraconid pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous of southern England. The genus includes species that were previously assigned to other genera.
In 1846, James Scott Bowerbank named and described some remains found in a chalk pit at Burham near Maidstone in Kent, as a new species of Pterodactylus: Pterodactylus giganteus. The specific name means "the gigantic one" in Latin. The same pit generated remains of Pterodactylus cuvieri. In 1848, Bowerbank published a histological study of the bone structure of P. giganteus.
At the time, the British Association Code of 1843 allowed to change names if they were inappropriate. In 1850, Richard Owen, considering the species not to have been particularly large, and renamed it into Pterodactylus conirostris; the specific name meaning "cone-snouted", which was based on the conical snout of specimen NHMUK PV 39412. However, after insistent objections by Bowerbank, Owen retracted this name in 1851 when he described the finds in more detail.
In 1914 Reginald Walter Hooley assigned the species to a new genus Lonchodectes, "the lance biter", as a Lonchodectes giganteus. In 2013, Taissa Rodrigues and Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner concluded that the type species of Lonchodectes, Lonchodectes compressirostris, was a nomen dubium. Therefore, they created a new genus Lonchodraco, combining Greek λόγχη, lonchē, "lance", with Latin draco, "dragon". Pterodactylus giganteus was made the type species of Lonchodraco, resulting in a Lonchodraco giganteus. Two other species previously assigned to Lonchodectes were moved to the new genus, resulting in a Lonchodraco machaerorhynchus and a Lonchodraco(?) microdon. The question mark in the latter name indicates that the authors were uncertain about the correctness of the assignment.
Rodrigues and Kellner considered NHMUK PV 39412 to be the lectotype of Lonchodraco giganteus, after a choice by Peter Wellnhofer in 1978. It was found in a layer of the Chalk Formation, dating from the Cenomanian-Turonian.
Source officielle
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