Peteinosaurus
| Peteinosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Fossil of Peteinosaurus zambellii in the Natural History Museum in Bergamo . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Triassic | ||||||||||||
| 221 to 213 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Peteinosaurus | ||||||||||||
| Wild , 1978 |
Peteinosaurus ( Gr .: peteinos = winged, sauros = lizard) is a genus of pterosaurs from the Upper Triassic of Italy. Thegenus with its type species P. zambelli Wild (1978),knownonly from two fossil finds, is one of the oldest pterosaurs discovered to date. The holotype consists of isolated skull and other skeletal elements that have not been preserved in an anatomical context. The second copy is missing the skull. Both are kept in the Natural History Museum in Bergamo . Peteinosaurus may be a direct ancestor of the Lower Jurassic pterosaur Dimorphodon .
features
Peteinosaurus had a wingspan of two feet . The wings were relatively short and only twice as long as the hind legs. The first phalanx was shorter than the forearm. The phalangeal formula is 2.3.3.4.0.
The number of cervical vertebrae is unknown. In front of the sacrum , Peteinosaurus had 15 trunk vertebrae, 13 of which had ribs. The three sacral vertebrae were not fused together. The long tail was supported by 30 to 40 vertebrae.
Peteinosaurus teeth were single-pointed and flattened, with sharp cutting edges on the front and back. In the lower jaw he had about 40 teeth, of which at least two were large fangs in front. The upper jaw and the rest of the skull are unknown.
Peteinosaurus probably ate insects or fish.
literature
- Peter Wellnhofer : The great encyclopedia of the pterosaurs. Illustrated natural history of the flying dinosaurs. 100 species. Mosaik-Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-576-10174-8 .
- Peter Wellnhofer: Pterosaurs. Pterosauria (= The new Brehm library. Vol. 534, ISSN 0138-1423 ). A. Ziemsen Verlag, Wittenberg Lutherstadt 1980.