''Maehary'' (meaning "one who looks to the sky" in

Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to Ethnography * Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia) * Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay * ...

) is a genus of pterosauromorph from the

Late Triassic The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch (geology), epoch of the Triassic geologic time scale, Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between annum, Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch ...

(

Norian The Norian is a division of the Triassic Period. It has the rank of an age ( geochronology) or stage (chronostratigraphy). It lasted from ~227 to million years ago. It was preceded by the Carnian and succeeded by the Rhaetian. Stratigraphic ...

)

Caturrita Formation The Caturrita Formation is a rock formation found in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Its sediments were deposited in the Paraná Basin. The formation is from the Upper Triassic and forms part of the Santa Maria Supersequence in the upper section of the ...

of Rio Grande do Sul,

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The genus contains a single species, ''M. bonapartei'', known from a partial skull and fragmentary

postcrania Postcrania (postcranium, adjective: postcranial) in zoology and vertebrate paleontology is all or part of the skeleton apart from the skull. Frequently, fossil remains, e.g. of dinosaurs or other extinct tetrapods, consist of partial or isolated s ...

Discovery and naming

The ''Maehary''

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

specimen, CAPPA/UFSM 0300, was discovered sometime between 2002 and 2005 in layers of the Caturrita Formation (Linha São Luiz Site, Candelária Sequence, Santa Maria Supersequence) near

Faxinal do Soturno Faxinal do Soturno is a municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. See also *List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul This is a list of the municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), located in the South Region of Br ...

, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The holotype consists of a partial skull,

vertebral centra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

, and fragmentary

scapula The scapula (plural scapulae or scapulas), also known as the shoulder blade, is the bone that connects the humerus (upper arm bone) with the clavicle (collar bone). Like their connected bones, the scapulae are paired, with each scapula on eithe ...

. Another specimen has also been assigned to the genus, UFRGS-PV-0769-T, which consists of a left

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The ...

and was previously referred to ''

Faxinalipterus ''Faxinalipterus'' is a genus of ornithodiran archosaur, originally described as a pterosaur, from the Late Triassic Caturrita Formation of southern Brazil. A study from 2022 reinterpreted the fossil remains and instead suggests them to belong ...

''. The specimen was originally described in 2010 as belonging to the supposed basal pterosaur ''

''.J. F. Bonaparte, C. L. Schultz, and M. B. Soares. (2010). Pterosauria from the Late Triassic of southern Brazil. In S. Bandyopadhyay (ed.), ''New Aspects of Mesozoic Biodiversity, Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences'' 132:63-71. However, when ''Faxinalipterus'' was reinterpreted as a lagerpetid in 2022, the snout was removed from its hypodigm and reidentified as belonging to ''Maehary''. In 2022, Kellner ''et al''. described ''Maehary bonapartei'' as a new genus and species of pterosauromorph. The generic name, "''Maehary''" is derived from the Guarani-Kaiowa phrase "Ma’ehary", roughly translating to "who looks to the sky", in reference to the pterosauromorph affinities of the taxon. The specific name, "''bonapartei''", honors the Argentine paleontologist José F. Bonaparte.

Classification

Kellner ''et al''. (2022) recovered ''Maehary'' as the earliest diverging member of Pterosauromorpha. The results of their

phylogenetic analysis In biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that pro ...

are shown below:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q111821206 Late Triassic reptiles Late Triassic reptiles of South America Triassic Brazil Fossils of Brazil Fossil taxa described in 2022 Pterosauromorpha Paraná Basin