Dsungaripterus

*Dsungaripterus weii*

Tim Bradley Artwork

***Dsungaripterus weii*** ("Junggar wing") was a pterodactyloid pterosaur that lived in the Early Cretaceous period in northwestern China. It had a curved jaw and two crests, one on the top of its head and a shorter one at the rear of its skull. It was first discovered by Chinese scientist C.C. Young in the Junggar Basin of northwestern China in 1964. More complete material was discovered in the same area in 1973.

## Description

*Dsungaripterus weii* had a wing span of 3 to 3.5 metres (10 to 11.5 feet). Its skull, up to 50 cm (20 inches) long, bore a low bone crest that ran down from the base of the skull to halfway to the beak. *Dsungaripterus's* head and neck were together almost 1 m (3.3 ft) long. Its most notable feature are its long, narrow, upcurved jaws with a pointed tip, making the animal look like a pair of flying tweezers. It had no teeth in the front part of its jaws, which were probably used to remove shellfish and worms from cracks in rocks or/and the sandy, muddy beaches it inhabited. It had knobbly flat teeth more to the back of the jaw that were well suited for crushing the armor of shellfish. In 1980 Peter Galton renamed *Pterodactylus brancai* (Reck 1931), a form from a late Jurassic African formation, into *Dsungaripterus brancai*, but the identification is now commonly rejected.

## History of discovery

*Dsungaripterus* was in 1964 named by Yang Zhongjian. The genus name combines a reference to the Junggar Basin with a Latinized Greek pteron, "wing". The type species is *Dsungaripterus weii*, the specific name honouring paleontologist C.M. Wei of the Palaeontological Division, Institute of Science, Bureau of Petroleum of Sinkiang. The holotype is IVPP No. V-2776, a partial skull and skeleton. From 1973 more material has been found including almost complete skulls.

In 1980 Peter Galton renamed *Pterodactylus brancai* (Reck 1931), a form from a late Jurassic African formation, into *Dsungaripterus brancai*, but the identification is now commonly rejected. In 1982 Natasha Bakhurina named a Dsungaripterus parvus based on a smaller skeleton from Mongolia. Later this was renamed into "Phobetor", a preoccupied name, and in 2009 concluded to be identical to *Noripterus*. In 2002 a *Dsungaripterus* wing finger phalanx was reported from Korea.

## Classification

Dsungaripterus was classified by Yang as a member of the Dsungaripteridae. Below is a cladogram showing the results of a phylogenetic analysis presented by Andres and colleagues in 2014. They recovered Dsungaripterus within the clade Dsungaripteromorpha (a subgroup within the Azhdarchoidea), more specifically within the Dsungaripteridae, sister taxon to Domeykodactylus. Their cladogram is shown below.

In 2019, a different topology, this time by Kellner and colleagues, was published. In this study, Dsungaripterus was recovered outside the Azhdarchoidea, within the larger group Tapejaroidea, sister taxon to Noripterus. The cladogram of the analysis is shown below.

## Appearance in other media

### *Jurassic Park*

* Dsungaripterus appeared in Jurassic World: The Game.
* Dsungaripterus appeared in the game Jurassic World Alive.
* Dsungaripterus appeared in the video game Jurassic World Evolution 2.