''Harpactognathus'' (meaning "seizing/grasping jaw") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

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 ...

found in the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time from 163.5 ± 1.0 to 145.0 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic strata.Owen 1987. In European lithostratigraphy, the name ...

-age

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltston ...

of Albany County,

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...

, United States. It is based on NAMAL 101, a partial skull consisting of the snout, recovered from near

Bone Cabin Quarry Bone Cabin Quarry is a dinosaur quarry that lay approximately northwest of Laramie, Wyoming near historic Como Bluff. During the summer of 1897 Walter Granger, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History, came upon a hillside li ...

in 1996. The specific name honors the discoverer, Joe Gentry, a volunteer for the Western Paleontological Laboratories, in

Lehi Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemie ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

.Carpenter, K., Unwin, D.M., Cloward, K., Miles, C.A., and Miles, C. (2003). A new scaphognathine pterosaur from the Upper Jurassic Formation of Wyoming, USA. In: Buffetaut, E., and Mazin, J.- M. (eds.). ''Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs.'' Geological Society of London, Special Publications 217:45-54. The holotype of ''Harpactognathus'' consists of a partial rostrum. Its describers found it to be most similar to ''

Scaphognathus ''Scaphognathus'' was a pterosaur that lived around Germany during the Late Jurassic. It had a wingspan of 0.9 m (3 ft). Naming The first known ''Scaphognathus'' specimen was described in 1831 by August Goldfuss who mistook the taill ...

'' among pterosaurs, albeit substantially larger (estimated skull length of 280–300 mm (11–12 in), estimated

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan o ...

of at least 2.5 m (8.2 ft). Because of the similarity, ''Harpactognathus'' was assigned to the subfamily

Scaphognathinae Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early pterosaurs named after ''Rhamphorhynchus'', that lived in the Late Jurassic. The family Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study o ...

of the family

Rhamphorhynchidae Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early pterosaurs named after ''Rhamphorhynchus'', that lived in the Late Jurassic. The family Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study o ...

. This genus is also notable for having a low bony crest running all the way to the tip of the

beak The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for eating, preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for fo ...

(pterosaur bone crests usually do not reach the tip) and for being the oldest known Morrison Formation pterosaur, having been found in the Salt Wash Member (

Kimmeridgian In the geologic timescale, the Kimmeridgian is an age in the Late Jurassic Epoch and a stage in the Upper Jurassic Series. It spans the time between 157.3 ± 1.0 Ma and 152.1 ± 0.9 Ma (million years ago). The Kimmeridgian follows the Oxford ...

Paleobiology

The authors hypothesized that Scaphognathines specialized as aerial predators in inland freshwater habitats. However, more recent publications have suggested scaphognathines lacked specializations for

piscivory A piscivore () is a carnivorous animal that eats primarily fish. The name ''piscivore'' is derived . Piscivore is equivalent to the Greek-derived word ichthyophage, both of which mean "fish eater". Fish were the diet of early tetrapod evolut ...

, and were likely terrestrial predators of small vertebrates or

corvid Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers. In colloquial English, they are known as the crow family or corvids. Currently, ...

-like generalists.Witton, Mark (2013). Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy. Princeton University Press. p. 51. .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3493313 Rhamphorhynchids Late Jurassic pterosaurs of North America Morrison fauna Taxa named by Kenneth Carpenter Fossil taxa described in 2003

Paleobiology

See also

References