A new dsungaripteroid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of the southern Junggar Basin, north-west China

A new dsungaripteroid pterosaur, Lonchognathosaurus aeutirostris gen. et sp. nov., is erected for the anterior part of a skull from the Lower Cretaceous Lianmuxin Formation (Upper Tugulu Group) of Liuhonggou, near Urumqi, in the southern Junggar Basin (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China). It is distinguished from other dsungaripteroids by its straight and delicate premaxillary rostrum, the presence of only eight teeth in each maxilla, of which the posteriormost is the smallest, and a tooth row that ends anterior to the fenestra nasopraeorbitalis. A phylogenetic analysis of the Dsungaripteroidea based on cranial characters indicates that Lonchognathosaurtis is the sister taxon of Dsungaripterits. It is demonstrated that the Germanodactylidae is most probably a paraphyletic assemblage of basal, Jurassic dsungaripteroids. The genus Germanodactylus is probably paraphyletic as well. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.