| Yixianopterus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Order: | †Pterosauria |
| Suborder: | †Pterodactyloidea |
| Clade: | †Istiodactyliformes |
| Genus: | †Yixianopterus Lü et al., 2006 |
| Type species | |
| †Yixianopterus jingangshanensis Lü et al., 2006 | |
Yixianopterus is a pterodactyloid pterosaur genus from the Barremian-Aptian-age Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China. It is known from a single specimen, holotype JZMP-V-12, housed at the Benxi Geological Museum. This specimen was doctored before acquisition, with much of the skull being fabricated.[1]
Classification
Lü et al. (2006) assigned Yixianopterus to the lophocratian family Lonchodectidae on the basis of dental characters, classifying it as the first Asian representative of Lonchodectidae.[2] Martill (2011) considered it potentially related to his new taxon Unwindia,[3] and Witton (2013) assigned it to the family Ornithocheiridae.[4]
A reappraisal of the holotype specimen and phylogenetic analysis by Jiang et al. (2020)[1] recovered Yixianopterus as a basal member of the clade Istiodactyliformes:
| Lanceodontia |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
References
- 1 2 Jiang, Shun-Xing; Zhang, Xin-Jun; Cheng, Xin; Wang, Xiao-Lin (2020). "A new pteranodontoid pterosaur forelimb from the upper Yixian Formation, with a revision of Yixianopterus jingangshanensis". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. doi:10.19615/j.cnki.1000-3118.201124.
- ↑ J. Lü, S. Ji, C. Yuan, Y. Gao, Z. Sun and Q. Ji. 2006. New pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Western Liaoning. Papers from the 2005 Heyuan International Dinosaur Symposium. Geological Publishing House, Beijing 195-203
- ↑ Martill, David M. (2011). "A new pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Santana Formation (Cretaceous) of Brazil". Cretaceous Research. 32 (2): 236–243. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2010.12.008.
- ↑ Witton, Mark P. (2013). Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
