Jianchangopterus

Jianchangopterus (meaning "wing from Jianchang") is an extinct genus of rhamphorhynchid pterosaur from the Middle Jurassic of western Liaoning, China. Jianchangopterus is known from a nearly complete skeleton with skull preserved. It was collected from the Tiaojishan Formation. It was first named (after Jianchang County) by Lü Junchang and Bo Xue in 2011 and the type species is Jianchangopterus zhaoianus, named for Zhao Limin, who was instrumental in the study of the only known fossil. ==Discovery and naming== The holotype, and only known fossil, of Jianchangopterus is a fully-complete skeleton preserved in articulation in a single slab with a counter-slab. It was uncovered at a locality called Linglongta in Jianchang County in Liaoning Province of China. This particular locality is part of the Tiaojishan Formation and it is extremely productive, and has yielded a wide variety of vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant fossils. The holotype of Jianchangopterus was collected and stored in the Yizhou Museum and was given the specimen number YHK-0931. It was described and named in 2011 by Lü Junchang and Bo Xue.

==Description== Jianchangopterus was a relatively small pterosaur, comparable in both size and morphology to Sordes. The skull was long and the combined length of the arm and finger bones was about , which translates to a wingspan of at least . Taphonomic damage to the fossil makes these measurements uncertain, and some of the sizes of individual bones are estimates. The authors of its description remark that it most likely ate insects, whereas most of the other pterosaurs it lived with likely ate fish.