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Serradraco

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Serradraco is a genus of Early Cretaceous pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Valanginian aged Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation in England. Named by Rigal et al. in 2018 with the description of a second specimen, it contains a single species, S. sagittirostris, which was formerly considered a species of Lonchodectes, L. sagittirostris. Although it has been interpreted as a probable lonchodectid, a subsequent study suggested it did not belong in Lonchodectidae.

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  • Discovery and naming
  • Paleobiology
  • References

Serradraco is a genus of Early Cretaceous pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Valanginian aged Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation in England. Named by Rigal et al. in 2018 with the description of a second specimen, it contains a single species, S. sagittirostris, which was formerly considered a species of Lonchodectes, L. sagittirostris. Although it has been interpreted as a probable lonchodectid, a subsequent study suggested it did not belong in Lonchodectidae.

==Discovery and naming== thumb|left|upright|Lithograph of the holotype In 1874, Richard Owen named a pair of lower jaws from the collection of Samuel Husband Beckles, found at St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex, as a new species of Pterodactylus: Pterodactylus sagittirostris. The specific name means "arrowhead-snouted" in Latin, referring to the mandible profile in upper view. In 1888, Edwin Tulley Newton, conforming to the soon to be published pterosaur systematics by Richard Lydekker, renamed the species into Ornithocheirus sagittirostris. In July 1891, the British Museum (Natural History), the present Natural History Museum, bought the piece from the heirs of Beckles.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Serradraco” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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