Draigwenia

Draigwenia
Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, Albian
D. platystomus holotype
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Order: Pterosauria
Suborder: Pterodactyloidea
Clade: Lanceodontia
Genus: Draigwenia
Holgado, 2021
Type species
Draigwenia platystomus
Holgado, 2021 (Seeley, 1870)
Synonyms

Draigwenia (meaning "white dragon" from the Welsh ddraig wen, referring to a dragon associated with the Anglo-Saxons) is an extinct genus of pterosaur known from a jaw fragment found in the Late Cretaceous Cambridge Greensand in the United Kingdom. The fossil was likely reworked from an Early Cretaceous layer that can be dated to the Albian. It currently contains a single species, Draigwenia platystomus.[1]

History

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The holotype CAMSM B54835, was described in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley as the holotype of his species Ornithocheirus platystomus. In 1914 Reginald Walter Hooley moved O. platystomus to Amblydectes.[2] It was assigned by David Unwin in 2001 to the genus Lonchodectes,[3] and in 2013 was excluded from the Lonchodraconidae.[4] In a 2021 review of the genus Amblydectes, Borja Holgado considered platystomus a valid taxon and gave it its own genus, Draigwenia, reinterpreting it as an indeterminate member of Lanceodontia.

References

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  1. ^ Holgado, Borja (2021-12-03). "On the validity of the genus Amblydectes Hooley 1914 (Pterodactyloidea, Anhangueridae) and the presence of Tropeognathinae in the Cambridge Greensand". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências. 93. doi:10.1590/0001-3765202120201658. ISSN 0001-3765.
  2. ^ Hooley, Reginald Walter (1914). "On the Ornithosaurian genus Ornithocheirus, with a review of the specimens from the Cambridge Greensand in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 13 (78): 529–557. doi:10.1080/00222931408693521. ISSN 0374-5481.
  3. ^ Unwin D.M., (2001), "An overview of the pterosaur assemblage from the Cambridge Greensand (Cretaceous) of Eastern England", Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe 4: 189–221
  4. ^ Rodrigues, T.; Kellner, A. (2013). "Taxonomic review of the Ornithocheirus complex (Pterosauria) from the Cretaceous of England". ZooKeys (308): 1–112. doi:10.3897/zookeys.308.5559. PMC 3689139. PMID 23794925.