''Batrachognathus'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

anurognathid Anurognathidae is a family (biology), family of small, short-tailed pterosaurs that lived in Europe, Asia, and possibly North America during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Eight genera are definitively known: ''Anurognathus'', from the Late ...

pterosaur Pterosaurs are 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 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

from the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

( Oxfordian to

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 154.8 ±0.8 Ma and 149.2 ±0.7 Ma (million years ago). The Kimmeridgian follows the Oxfordian ...

)

Karabastau Formation The Karabastau Formation () is a geological formation and lagerstätte in the Karatau Mountains of southern Kazakhstan whose strata date to the Middle to Late Jurassic. It is an important locality for insect fossils that has been studied since ...

of the central Asian republic of

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

. The genus was named in 1948 by the Russian

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

Anatoly Nicolaevich Ryabinin. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

is ''Batrachognathus volans''. The genus name is derived from Greek ''batrakhos'', "frog" and ''gnathos'', "jaw", in reference to the short wide head. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

means "flying" in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Description

''Batrachognathus'' was a small pterosaur, with a wingspan of and body mass of . Like all anurognathids ''Batrachognathus'' is assumed to have been an

insectivore file:Common brown robberfly with prey.jpg, A Asilidae, robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivore, carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the Entomophagy ...

, catching insects and perhaps small fish on the wing with its broad mouth. Three fossils have been found in a

lacustrine A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from t ...

sediment in the North-West

Tien Shan The Tian Shan, also known as the Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, meaning the "Mountains of God/Heaven", is a large system of mountain ranges in Central Asia. The highest peak is Jengish Chokusu at high and located in Kyrgyzstan. Its lowest point is ...

foothills of the Karatau Mountains. In the Jurassic this area had some similarities in habitat to the

Solnhofen Solnhofen is a municipality in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen in the region of Middle Franconia in the ' of Bavaria in Germany. It is in the Altmühl valley. The local area is famous in geology and palaeontology for Solnhofen lime ...

lagoon deposits in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, Germany. The genus is based on

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

PIN 52-2, an incomplete and disarticulated skeleton consisting of skull fragments, jaws, vertebrae, ribs, legs and wing bones. The skull of 48 mm (1.9 in) long is high, short and broad. The upper jaws have in total 22 or 24 recurved conical teeth; with the lower jaws they make a short and very wide mouth. The animal is not preserved with a tail. Whether it had one is debatable; usually it is assumed a short tail was present.

Classification

''Batrachognathus'' was assigned to the

Anurognathidae Anurognathidae is a family of small, short-tailed pterosaurs that lived in Europe, Asia, and possibly North America during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Eight genera are definitively known: '' Anurognathus'', from the Late Jurassic of Germ ...

, as a relative of ''

Anurognathus ''Anurognathus'' (from the Greek ''ανоυρα γναθος'' "frog jaw") is an extinct genus of small pterosaur from the Late Jurassic Altmühltal Formation of Germany. ''Anurognathus'' was first named and described by Ludwig Döderlein in 19 ...

''. In 2003

Alexander Kellner Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner (born September 26, 1961) is a Brazilian geologist and paleontologist who is a leading expert in the field of studying pterosaurs. His research has focused mainly on fossil reptiles from the Cretaceous Period, i ...

named the clade Asiaticognathidae to include it and the Asian Anurognathid ''

Dendrorhynchoides ''Dendrorhynchoides'' is a genus of anurognathid pterosaur. It contains only the holotype species, ''D. curvidentatus'', which was likely recovered from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, China. The genus was fi ...

''. Christopher Bennett pointed out the name Asiaticognathidae was inappropriate, as the clade lacked an ''Asiaticognathus'', and in 2009 Kellner proposed Batrachognathinae as a replacement.Alexander W. A. Kellner, Xiaolin Wang, Helmut Tischlinger, Diogenes de Almeida Campos, David W. E. Hone, and Xi Meng. (2009). "The soft tissue of ''Jeholopterus'' (Pterosauria, Anurognathidae, Batrachognathinae) and the structure of the pterosaur wing membrane", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'' According to an analysis in 2006 by

Lü Junchang Lü Junchang (; 1965 – 9 October 2018) was a Chinese palaeontologist and professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. An expert on Mesozoic reptiles, he described and named dozens of dinosaur and pterosaur taxa ...

, ''Batrachognathus'' and ''

Jeholopterus ''Jeholopterus'' was a small anurognathid pterosaur known from the Middle to Late Jurassic Daohugou Beds of the Tiaojishan Formation of Inner Mongolia, China, and possibly the Early Cretaceous Sinuiju Formation of North Korea. Naming The gen ...

'' are sister taxa. In 2021, a

phylogenetic analysis In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data ...

conducted by Xuefang Wei and colleagues recovered ''Batrachognathus'' within the subfamily Batrachognathinae, sister taxon to the genus '' Sinomacrops''. Below is a cladogram representing their phylogenetic analysis:

Description

Classification

See also

References

Further reading