Fernando
E. Novas, Martin Kundrat, Federico L. Agnolín,
Martín D. Ezcurra, Per Erik Ahlberg, Marcelo P. Isasi, Alberto Arriagada, y Pablo Chafrat
Here, we expand the meager record
of Late Cretaceous South American pterosaurs with the description of a partial
rostrum belonging to a large azhdarchid pterodactyloid. The specimen was collected
close to the Bajo de Arriagada locality, corresponding to the uppermost
Cretaceous Allen Formation of Argentina, around 80 km northwest of the
well-sampled Bajo de Santa Rosa locality (Martinelli and Forasiepi, 2004). The Azhdarchidae were the most abundant pterosaurs during latest Cretaceous
times (Company et al., 1999; Butler et al., 2009). This clade comprises several
species of long-necked pterosaurs ranging from 2.5 to 10 m in wing span, thus
including the largest known flying vertebrates, such as the gigantic
Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx (Kellner and Langston, 1996; Buffetaut et al.,
2002; Witton and Naish, 2008; Witton and Habib, 2010). Azhdarchid remains have been
documented from almost all continental landmasses, includ-ing Europe, North
America, Africa, Asia, and probably Oceania (Bennett and Long, 1991; Company et
al., 1999; Averianov et al., 2005; Barrett et al., 2008; Kear et al., 2010;
˝Osi et al., 2011). In South America, probable azhdarchid remains consist of a
fragmentary postcranial skeleton from the Aptian of Brazil (Martill and Frey,
1998, 1999) and partial long bones from the Turonian–Coniacian of Argentina (Kellner
et al., 2006; Codorniú and Gasparini, 2007). However, recent reassessments of
this material suggested that the Brazilian specimen is more closely related to
tapejarids than to azhdarchids and that the Argentinean records are dubious
(Kellner, 2004; Kellner et al., 2006; Unwin and Martill, 2007). As a result,
the specimen reported here represents the first unambiguous evidence of an
azhdarchid pterosaur from South America. This specimen represents a new genus
and species, Aerotitan sudamericanus, which is diagnosed based on a unique
combination of characters, including one autapomorphy, and represents one of the
largest known South American pterosaurs. The fossil here described resulted
from a joint Argentine-Swedish paleontological expedition to Patagonia.
Novas, F. E., Kundrat, M., Agnolín, F. L., Ezcurra, M. D., Ahlberg, P. E., Isasi, M. P., Arriagada, A. y Chafrat, P. 2012.
A New Large
Pterosaur From The Late Cretaceous Of Patagonia.
Journal
of Vertebrate Paleontology 32(6):1447–1452
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