Araripesaurus is a genus a pterosaur belonging to the suborder Pterodactyloidea, it was discovered in the Romualdo Formation of the Santana Group in northeastern Brazil, which dates back to the Aptian and Albian of the Early Cretaceous. The type species is A. castilhoi.
Discovery and naming
The genus was named in 1971 by Brazilian
paleontologist Llewellyn Ivor Price.
The
type species is
Araripesaurus castilhoi. The genus name refers to the
Araripe Plateau. The specific name honors the collector Moacir Marques de Castilho, who in 1966 donated the chalk nodule containing the fossil. The
holotype,
DNPM (DGM 529-R), consists of a partial wing, including distal fragments of the radius and
ulna,
carpals, all
metacarpals and several digits. The specimen was a subadult. Its
wingspan was estimated at .
[R. L. Carroll. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution 1-698 A.
] Two other possible specimens are known; both consist of wing fragments and are roughly a third larger than the holotype, and were referred to the genus by Price.
In 1985 Peter Wellnhofer has named a second species, Araripesaurus santanae;[P. Wellnhofer. 1985. Neue Pterosaurier aus der Santana-Formation (Apt) der Chapada do Araripe, Brasilien. Palaeontographica Abteilung A 187:105-182] this and two unnamed Araripesaurus sp. indicated by Wellhofer, were in 1990 by Kellner moved to Anhanguera as Anhanguera santanae.[Eberhard Frey, Helmut Tischlinger, Marie-Céline Buchy and David M. Martill (2003).
Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 217, 233-266. ][P. Wellnhofer. 1991. Weitere Pterosaurierfunde aus der Santana-Formation (Apt) der Chapada do Araripe, Brasilien. Palaeontographica Abteilung A 215:43-101]
Classification
Price placed
Araripesaurus in the
Ornithocheiridae.
[Price, L.L., 1971, "A Presença de Pterosauria no Cretáceo Inferior da Chapada do Araripe, Brasil", Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 43: 451-461] Araripesaurus was the first pterosaur known from the Santana Formation. Later, other species were named from more complete remains and this raised the question whether they could be identical to
Araripesaurus. In 1991 researcher Alexander Kellner concluded that
Araripesaurus was identical to
Santanadactylus and that due to a lack of distinguishing features it could only be more generally classified as a pterodactyloid. In 2000 Kellner reassessed the genus and concluded that precisely because of such a lack of
autapomorphy (unique characters), it could not be synonymized with
Santanadactylus and gave its position after a
cladistics analysis as close to
Anhangueridae, more derived than
Istiodactylus. Kellner also indicated that
Araripesaurus resembled
Anhanguera piscator in morphology, albeit considerably smaller.
[Unwin, D. New pterosaurs from Brazil (1988). Nature 332, 398–399. ]
See also
-
Timeline of pterosaur research
-
List of pterosaurs
