Dsungaripterus
Dsungaripterus is a genus of dsungaripterid pterosaur with an average wingspan of . "Dsungaripterus" lived during the Early Cretaceous in what is now China, and its first fossil was found in the Junggar Basin. Description. "Dsungaripterus weii" had a wing span of 3 to 3.5 meters (9.8 to 11.5 ft). Like most dsungaripteroids it had a rather robust skeleton with thick walls and stouty bodily proportions, suggesting a mostly terrestrial lifestyle. The flight style of these animals is unclear, but it was probably punctuated by abrupt landings and extensive flapping. The skull of "Dsungaripterus", 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 long. Its most notable feature are its long, narrow, upcurved jaws with a pointed tip. It had no teeth in the front part of its jaws, which were probably used to remove prey from cracks in rocks and/or the sandy, muddy inland environments it inhabited. It had knobbly flat teeth more to the back of the jaw that were well suited for crushing the armor of shellfish or other hard objects. "Dsungaripterus" also had a palate similar to  that of azhdarchoid pterosaurs. History of discovery. "Dsungaripterus" was described 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 honoring paleontologist C.M. Wei of the Palaeontological Division, Institute of Science, Bureau of Petroleum of Xinjiang. The holotype is IVPP 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 new species, "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.