''Huanhepterus'' 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 ...

of ctenochasmatid

pterodactyloid Pterodactyloidea ( ; derived from the Greek words ''πτερόν'' (''pterón'', for usual ''ptéryx'') "wing", and ''δάκτυλος'' (''dáktylos'') "finger") is one of the two traditional suborders of pterosaurs ("wing lizards"), and contai ...

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 of what is now

Qingyang Qingyang may refer to: * Qingyang, Chengdu (成都市青羊区), a central urban district of Chengdu, Sichuan, China * Qingyang, Anhui (安徽省青阳县), a county in Anhui, China * Qingyang, Gansu (甘肃省庆阳市), a city in Gansu, China * ...

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

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 ...

History

The genus was named by

Dong Zhiming Dong Zhiming (Chinese language, Chinese: 董枝明, Pinyin: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; January 1937 – 20 October 2024) was a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist formerly employed at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) ...

in 1982. 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 ''Huanhepterus quingyangensis''. The genus name refers to the Huang Jian (not the

Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...

or "Huang He", but a smaller tributary of the Jinghe River in Gansu), and combines it with a Latinized Greek ''pteron'', "wing". The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

refers to Qinyang County. ''Huanhepterus'' is based on the

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 ...

specimen, IVPP V9070, a partial articulated skeleton consisting mostly of impressions of the left half of the body and 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 pecking, grasping, and holding (in probing for food, eating, manipulating and ...

-end of the skull. The

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

was in May 1978 found in a quarry operated by the Sanshilipu- commune, when an explosion exposed a vertebra. Its force obliterated the right half of the specimen. IVPP V9070 hails from the Early Cretaceous-age Hanhe-Huachi Formation of the Zhidan Group.

Description

''Huanhepterus'' had a long, low skull, with a low crest running along the midline that was higher toward the tip of the snout and became smaller toward the eyes. The

teeth A tooth (: teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tear ...

, about 26 pairs in the upper and 25 in the lower jaws, were slender and numerous, and became shorter farther from the 11th pair, both to the front as to the back, where they become absent completely in posterior part of the snout. The cervical

vertebra Each vertebra (: vertebrae) is an irregular bone with a complex structure composed of bone and some hyaline cartilage, that make up the vertebral column or spine, of vertebrates. The proportions of the vertebrae differ according to their spina ...

e were long, as were the toes, and there was no fused complex of the front dorsal vertebrae (

notarium Notarium or os dorsale is a bone consisting of the fused vertebra of the shoulder in birds and some pterosaurs. The structure helps brace the chest against the forces generated by the wings. In birds, the vertebrae are only in contact with adjac ...

), as seen in other pterosaurs. The

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

of the type individual was estimated at 2.5 m (8.2 ft). This genus was described as most like ''

Gnathosaurus ''Gnathosaurus'' (meaning "jawed lizard") is a genus of ctenochasmatid pterosaur containing two species: ''G. subulatus'', named in 1833 from the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany, and ''G. macrurus'', known from the Purbeck Limestone of the UK. ...

''.Dong, Z.-M. (1982). On a new Pterosauria (''Huanhepterus quingyangensis'' gen.et. sp.nov.) from Ordos, China. ''Vertebrata PalAsiatica'' 20(2):115-121. David Unwin later referred it the Gnathosaurinae, a subgroup of the

Ctenochasmatidae 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 Earl ...

Classification

Below is

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

following a topology by Andres, Clark and Xu (2014). In the analysis, they recovered ''Huanhepterus'' within the family Ctenochasmatidae, more precisely within the subfamily Gnathosaurinae, though placed in the basalmost position.

Biology

Like ''

'', it may have used its tightly-packed, slender teeth to filter food from water.

References

External links