Saratovia

Saratovia is a genus of targaryendraconian pterosaurs that lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now Russia. The genus contains a single species, S. glickmani, known from a partial lower jawbone, and is named after the city of Saratov, where the specimen was found, and its discover Leonid S. Glickman. The fossil comes from sedimentary rocks of the Melovatka Formation. Uncovered in the 1940s, the only specimen was assigned to various genera such as Ornithocheirus, Anhanguera and Coloborhynchus before being recognized as a new taxon and named in 2025. Likewise, though long thought to belong to the family Ornithocheiridae, more recent research lead to the erection of the distinct group Targaryendraconia, of which Saratovia is thought to be a member. As with other targaryendraconians, Saratovia would have possessed a narrow and elongate jaw tip filled with long teeth. It is distinguished from these relatives and other pterosaurs by the lack of a groove through the middle of its lower jaw, instead possessing a flattened platform covered in small foramina (holes) leading to an internal canal. Living in a shallow continental sea alongside marine reptiles and other pterosaurs, it likely had a piscivorous diet. As this ecosystem dates to the end of the Cenomanian age, Saratovia is considered one of the last toothed pterosaurs in the fossil record before their extinction.

== Discovery and naming == left|thumb|Type locality (biology)|Type locality of Saratovia In the later 1940s, Russian palaeontology student Leonid S. Glickman discovered a fragment of pterosaur rostrum in an abandoned sand quarry in Saratov, Saratov Oblast, Russia. The locality, termed the Lysaya Gora 3 locality, represents an outcrop of the upper Melovatka Formation, part of a series of Cenomanian-aged phosphorite sands widespread throughout European Russia. Pterosaur fossils of this age are considered to be rare in Europe outside of the Cambridge Greensand in England, and Glickman's specimen remains the only known Cenomanian pterosaur skull specimen from the country. It was later studied by Glickman's scientific supervisor, Lev I. Khozatsky. When first reporting it in a 1964 publication, he provisionally considered it to represent a specimen of the genus Ornithocheirus, which was a wastebasket taxon for the material of many unrelated pterosaurs at the time. He later drafted a more complete description, which was finalized and published by L. A. Nesov in 1995 after Khozatsky's death in 1992. This study identified the specimen as part of the upper jaw and noted that the unusual curvature suggested it represented a new taxon.