''Beipiaopterus'' is a

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 ...

ctenochasmatid Ctenochasmatidae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They are characterized by their distinctive teeth, which are thought to have been used for filter-feeding. Ctenochasmatids lived from the Late Jurassic to the Early ...

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

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 143.1 ...

period (

Aptian The Aptian is an age (geology), age in the geologic timescale or a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early or Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or series (stratigraphy), S ...

stage) of what is now the

Yixian Formation The Yixian Formation (; formerly Romanization of Chinese, transcribed as Yihsien Formation or Yixiang Formation) is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that spans the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous. I ...

of the

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The genus was named in 2003 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 ...

. The generic name is derived from Beipiao City in

Liaoning Province ) , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = Clockwise: Mukden Palace in Shenyang, Xinghai Square in Dalian, Dalian coast, Yalu River at Dandong , image_map = Liaoning in China (+all claims hatched).svg , ...

and a Latinized Greek ''pteron'', "wing". 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 ...

honors paleontologist Professor Chen Peiji. The type and only species 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 ...

BPM 0002, a crushed partial skeleton of a subadult individual on a slab, missing the skull. It includes four cervical, fourteen dorsal, three sacral and nine caudal vertebrae, a complete left wing and two hind limbs. Remains of the soft parts have been preserved, including partial wing membranes, a membrane attached to the tibia, a "mane" on the neck and webbing of the feet. It had a wingspan of , and the animal itself had a length of about , however, this is only if the skull had the same length as the remainder of the body: for the neck, ten centimetres for the rump and for the tail. In the wing finger the fourth, normally most extreme, phalanx was absent; according to Lü this was not an artifact of preservation but the normal condition of the animal, one also known from ''

Nyctosaurus ''Nyctosaurus'' (meaning "night lizard") is a genus of nyctosaurid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period of what is now the Niobrara Formation of the mid-western United States, which, during the time ''Nyctosaurus'' was alive, was covered in ...

''. In 2005 a study of the wing membrane by SEM (

scanning electron microscope A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that ...

) was published, showing it had contained many blood vessels, which indicated a role in the

thermoregulation Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...

.Lü J.-C., Kobayashi Y., Yuan C., Ji S., and Ji Q., 2005, "SEM Observation of the Wing Membrane of ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'' (Pterosauria)". ''Acta Geologica Sinica'' 79:6 766–769.

Classification

Lü assigned ''Beipiaopterus'' to the Ctenochasmatidae because of the elongation of the cervical vertebrae and the general form of the humerus. This was later affirmed by an exact

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

analysis which showed that it was a basal member of the group. In 2018, Longrich, Martill and Andres recovered ''Beipiaopterus'' within the tribe Pterodaustrini, meaning that it was placed in a derived position within the Ctenochasmatidae, which contradicts its placement as a basal member.Longrich, N.R., Martill, D.M., and Andres, B. (2018)
Late Maastrichtian pterosaurs from North Africa and mass extinction of Pterosauria at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
''PLoS Biology'', 16(3): e2001663.

References

Notes

*Lü J-C. and Wang X-L. 2001. "Soft tissue in an Early Cretaceous pterosaur from Liaoning Province, China". ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'' 21 (supplement to 3): 74A. *Lü J-C. 2002. "Soft tissue in an Early Cretaceous pterosaur from Liaoning Province, China". ''Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum'' 1: 19– 28. *Lü J.-C., 2003, "A new pterosaur: ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'', gen. et sp. nov. (Reptilia: Pterosauria) from Western Liaoning Province, China". ''Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum'' 2: 153–160. *Lü J.-C., Kobayashi Y., Yuan C., Ji S., and Ji Q., 2005, "SEM Observation of the Wing Membrane of ''Beipiaopterus chenianus'' (Pterosauria)". ''Acta Geologica Sinica'' 79:6 766–769. {{Portal bar, Paleontology, China Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia Ctenochasmatoids Fossil taxa described in 2003 Yixian fauna Taxa named by Lü Junchang Pterosaur genera

Classification

See also

References

Notes