''Moganopterus'' 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

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 ...

of western

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 , ...

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 ...

Discovery and naming

The fossil of ''Moganopterus'' was discovered at the village of Xiaosanjiazi near the town of Lamadong in

. In 2012 it was named and described 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 ...

, Pu Hanyong, Xu Li, Wu Yanhua and Wei Xuefang as 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 ...

''Moganopterus zhuiana''. The generic name is derived from the legendary sword couple

Gan Jiang and Mo Ye Gan Jiang () and Mo Ye () were a swordsmith couple, discussed in the literature involving the Spring and Autumn period of History of China, Chinese history. Some aspects of this material may be considered historical; others are certainly mythologi ...

, in reference to the blade-like jaws, and a Latinized Greek πτερόν, ''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 ...

honors Ms. Zhu Haifen, who made the specimen available to science. 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 ...

, 41HIII0419, was uncovered in a layer of 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 ...

, dating from the

Barremian The Barremian is an age in the geologic timescale (or a chronostratigraphic stage) between 125.77 Ma (million years ago) and 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma (Historically, this stage was placed at 129.4 million to approximately 125 million years ago) It is a ...

, about 125 million years old. It consists of an almost complete skull with lower jaws and the second to fourth neck vertebrae. The fossil is compressed on a slab and counterslab, the splitting of the two plates having damaged some bones. The specimen is part of the collection of the Geological Museum of Henan.

Description

''Moganopterus'' is a large pterosaur. The skull has a preserved length of about and the longest preserved neck vertebra, the fourth, a length of . The skull is the largest known of any toothed pterosaur. The size of skull and neck indicates a

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 about 7 meters (23 ft), making ''Moganopterus'' one of the largest known ctenochasmid pterosaurs. However, the maximum wingspan was reduced to in the redescription of the holotype by Gao et al. (2022). Apart from the size, the describers established some diagnostic traits. The jaws are very elongated and have straight edges. The total number of teeth in the skull is at least sixty-two. The large skull opening, the ''fenestra nasoantorbitalis'', is rectangular and represents 22% of the snout length. The back of the skull bears a long and narrow parietal crest, sticking out at an angle of 15° to the longitudinal skull axis. Not taking into account the crest, the skull is 11.5 times longer than tall. The neck vertebrae are five times longer than high. Moganopterus reconstruction

''Moganopterus'' shows an extreme elongation of the upper and lower jaws. The back of the skull is just high and its top gradually descends towards the pointed snout tip. On the front of the snout, a low triangular crest is present, measuring long and tall. The profile of the skull is continued by a narrow crest sticking out at the back, similar to ''

Pteranodon ''Pteranodon'' (; from and ) is a genus of pterosaur that included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with ''P. longiceps'' having a wingspan of over . They lived during the late Cretaceous geological period of North America in presen ...

''. It is unknown whether this crest was flat or rod-like; its length cannot be determined because it reaches the edge of the slabs. The lower jaws, lacking a keel, have a length of . They are about as tall as the snout and have a pointed tip. The jaws are lined with long conical pointed teeth, up to in length, slightly recurved and more or less oriented vertically. The describers estimated there were fifteen teeth in the upper jaw and seventeen in the lower jaw for a total of sixty-four, which closely matches the number of sixty-two actually found. The teeth rows stretch from the very front of the head until the back edge of the ''fenestra nasoantorbitalis''. They are associated with oblique cellular structures visible in the bone of the upper and lower jaws, the nature of which has not been determined. Hollow structures, reinforced by struts, can also be seen in the parietal crest and the vertebrae. The fourth cervical is 7.25 times as long as it is tall.

Phylogeny

In 2012, ''Moganopterus'' was assigned to the

Boreopteridae Boreopteridae (meaning "northern wings") is a group of pterodactyloid pterosaurs from the Aptian-age Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China. Classification In 2006, Lü Junchang and colleagues named the clade Boreopteridae for the ...

, forming a Moganopterinae with its

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

'' Feilongus''. Below is a

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 ...

from Lü ''et al.'' (2012). Only taxa that nest within

Ornithocheiroidea 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 ...

are shown. Cladogram following Longrich, Martill, and Andres, 2018, in which they place ''Moganopterus'' within 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 ...

instead of the Boreopteridae:

References

{{Portal bar, Paleontology, China Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2012 Ctenochasmatoids Yixian fauna Taxa named by Lü Junchang

Discovery and naming

Description

Phylogeny

See also

References