''Draigwenia'' (meaning "white dragon" from the

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, of or about Wales * Welsh language, spoken in Wales * Welsh people, an ethnic group native to Wales Places * Welsh, Arkansas, U.S. * Welsh, Louisiana, U.S. * Welsh, Ohio, U.S. * Welsh Basin, during t ...

''ddraig wen'', referring to a dragon associated with the

Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

) 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 ...

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 ...

known from a jaw fragment found in the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

Cambridge Greensand The Cambridge Greensand is a geological unit in England whose strata are earliest Cenomanian in age. It lies above the erosive contact between the Gault Formation and the Chalk Group in the vicinity of Cambridgeshire, and technically forms the l ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The fossil was likely reworked from an

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 ...

layer that can be dated to the

Albian The Albian is both an age (geology), age of the geologic timescale and a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early/Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch/s ...

. It currently contains a single species, ''Draigwenia platystomus''.

History

The holotype CAMSM B54835, was described in 1870 by

Harry Govier Seeley Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British paleontologist. Early life Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his fa ...

as the holotype of his species ''

Ornithocheirus ''Ornithocheirus'' (from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις", meaning bird, and "χεῖρ", meaning hand) is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the United Kingdom and possibly Morocco. Several species ha ...

platystomus''. In 1914 Reginald Walter Hooley moved ''O''. ''platystomus'' to ''

Amblydectes ''Amblydectes'' is a genus of pterosaur known from jaw fragments. It apparently had a jaw flattened towards the tip and triangular in cross-section. It has at times been synonymized with ''Coloborhynchus'', ''Criorhynchus'', ''Lonchodectes'', ...

''. It was assigned by David Unwin in 2001 to the genus ''

Lonchodectes ''Lonchodectes'' (meaning "lance biter") was a genus of lonchodectid pterosaur from several formations dating to the Turonian (Late Cretaceous) of England, mostly in the area around Kent. The species belonging to it had been assigned to ''Orni ...

'',Unwin D.M., (2001), "An overview of the pterosaur assemblage from the Cambridge Greensand (Cretaceous) of Eastern England", ''Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin'', Geowissenschaftliche Reihe 4: 189–221 and in 2013 was excluded from the Lonchodraconidae. In a 2021 review of the genus ''

'', Borja Holgado considered ''platystomus'' a valid taxon and gave it its own genus, ''Draigwenia'', reinterpreting it as an indeterminate member of Lanceodontia.

References

Fossil taxa described in 2021 Pteranodontoidea Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Europe Albian genera {{pterosaur-stub