''Petrodactyle'' (meaning "stone finger") 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 ...

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 from the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

Mörnsheim Formation The Mörnsheim Formation is a geologic formation in Germany, near Daiting and Mörnsheim, Bavaria. It preserves fossils dating back to the Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigra ...

(

Solnhofen limestone The Solnhofen Limestone or Solnhofen Plattenkalk, formally known as the Altmühltal Formation, is a Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte that preserves a rare assemblage of fossilized organisms, including highly detailed imprints of soft bodied organi ...

) of

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The genus contains a single species, ''P. wellnhoferi'', known from a partial skeleton belonging to a subadult individual. ''Petrodactyle'' is one of the largest Solnhofen pterosaurs and one of the largest Jurassic pterosaurs, with an estimated wingspan of .

Discovery and naming

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 ...

and only known specimen, LF 2809, was recovered from the "Dritte Rosa" layer of the

, near Mühlheim in Bavaria, Germany. The specimen was initially discovered in a public visitor's quarry by Günther Zehetner and excavated by quarry owners Roland Pöschl and Uli Leonhard. LF 2809 was acquired by the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education in 2015 and is permanently deposited in their collections. In 2023, Hone et al. described ''Petrodactyle wellnhoferi'' as a new genus and species of ctenochasmatid pterosaur based on these fossil remains. The generic name, "''Petrodactyle''", is derived from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

words ''petro'', meaning "stone", and ''dactylus'', meaning "finger". The name references the name given to ''

Pterodactylus ''Pterodactylus'' (from ) is a genus of extinct pterosaurs. It is thought to contain only a single species, ''Pterodactylus antiquus'', which was the first pterosaur to be named and identified as a flying reptile and one of the first prehis ...

'' in its initial description in 1809, "Ptero-Dactyle", which was mistakenly printed as "Petro-Dactyle" on the cover. 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 ...

, "''wellnhoferi''" honours pterosaur researcher

Peter Wellnhofer Peter Wellnhofer (born Munich, 1936) is a German paleontologist at the Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie in Munich. He is best known for his work on the various fossil specimens of ''Archaeopteryx'' or "Urvogel", the first known bird. ...

Classification

Hone et al. (2023) assigned ''Petrodactyle'' to the clade

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 ...

as a possible member or relative of the family

Gallodactylidae Gallodactylidae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. Gallodactylids differed from other related pterosaurs in several distinct features, including fewer than 50 teeth present only in the jaw tips, and rounded crests pre ...

. In their 2024 description of ''

Skiphosoura ''Skiphosoura'' (meaning "sword tail") is an extinct genus of pterodactyliform pterosaurs from the Late Jurassic Mörnsheim Formation of Germany. The genus contains a single species, ''S. bavarica'', known from a nearly complete skeleton includ ...

'', Hone et al. scored ''Petrodactyle'' into an extensively modified version of the phylogenetic dataset of Pêgas (2024). As was initially speculated by Hone and colleagues in 2023, ''Petrodactyle'' was recovered as closely affiliated with gallodactylid taxa such as '' Normannognathus'' and ''

Cycnorhamphus ''Cycnorhamphus'' (meaning "swan beak") is a genus of gallodactylid ctenochasmatoid pterosaur from the Late Jurassic period of France and Germany, about 152 million years ago. It is synonymous with the genus ''Gallodactylus''. History In 1855, ...

''. The results of their

phylogenetic analysis In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data ...

are displayed in the

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 ...

below, with derived taxa abbreviated for simplicity.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q119585708 Ctenochasmatoids Late Jurassic pterosaurs of Europe Solnhofen fauna Jurassic Germany Fossils of Germany Fossil taxa described in 2023 Tithonian life