Anurognathidae

Anurognathidae
	Anurognathus ammoni hunts the butterfly-like lacewing Kalligramma haeckeli
Temporal occurrence
	Bathonium ( Middle Jurassic ) to Aptium ( Lower Cretaceous )
	168.3 to 112.9 million years
Locations
	Solnhofen; Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China;
Systematics
	Sauropsida
	Diapsida
	Archosauria
	Ornithodira
	Flugsaurier (Pterosauria)
	Anurognathidae
Scientific name
	Anurognathidae
	Kuhn , 1967

The Anurognathidae are a family of small pterosaurs that lived on Laurasia from the Middle Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous .

features

In contrast to all other pterosaurs, the animals had a frog-like, short, high-domed skull with a rounded snout and large skull windows . The paired intermaxillary bone (premaxillary) was fused and formed the anterior border of the nostrils with a steeply ascending process. Her few teeth were small, pointed and stood vertically in the jaw with a long distance. The Anurognathidae were probably insect eaters . Hair -like skin structures can be identified in the fossil of the Chinese Jeholopterus .

Like all original pterosaurs, the Anurognathidae had relatively short metacarpal bones . The wingspan was only half a meter at most. Compared to the Dimorphodontidae, their wings were longer in relation to body size. The fifth toe of the hind legs was thin, long and splayed out. The tail was short, fused and consists of only eleven vertebrae in Anurognathus . Nevertheless, the Anurognathidae do not belong to the short-tailed pterosaurs (Pterodactyloidea), but split off from the pterosaur lineage earlier.

Genera

swell

David M. Unwin: The Pterosaurs. From deep time. PI Press, New York NY 2006, ISBN 0-13-146308-X .
Peter Wellnhofer : Pterosaurs. Pterosauria (= The new Brehm library. Vol. 534, ISSN 0138-1423 ). Ziemsen, Wittenberg Lutherstadt 1980.

Individual evidence

↑ Junchang Lü, Qingjin Meng, Baopeng Wang, Di Liu, Caizhi Shen and Yuguang Zhang. 2017. Short Note On A New Anurognathid Pterosaur with Evidence of Perching Behavior from Jianchang of Liaoning Province, China. in DWE Hone, MP Witton and DM Martill: New Perspectives on Pterosaur Palaeobiology . Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 455. DOI: 10.1144 / SP455.16

Web links

Commons : Anurognathidae - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

[1] Junchang Lü, Qingjin Meng, Baopeng Wang, Di Liu, Caizhi Shen and Yuguang Zhang. 2017. Short Note On A New Anurognathid Pterosaur with Evidence of Perching Behavior from Jianchang of Liaoning Province, China. in DWE Hone, MP Witton and DM Martill: New Perspectives on Pterosaur Palaeobiology . Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 455. DOI: 10.1144 / SP455.16