Nurhachius luei, a new istiodactylid pterosaur (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province (China) and comments on the Istiodactylidae

Abstract

A new istiodactylid pterosaur, Nurhachius luei sp. nov., is here reported based on a complete skull with mandible and some cervical vertebrae from the lower part of the Jiufotang Formation of western Liaoning (China). This is the second species of Nurhachius, the type-species being N. ignaciobritoi from the upper part of the Jiufotang Formation. A revised diagnosis of the genus Nurhachius is provided, being this taxon characterized by the presence of a slight dorsal deflection of the palatal anterior tip, which is homoplastic with the Anhangueria and Cimoliopterus. N. luei sp. nov. shows an unusual pattern of tooth replacement, with respect to other pterodactyloid species. The relationships within the Istiodactylidae and with their closest taxa are investigated through a phylogenetic analysis by parsimony.

An unusual new genus of istiodactylid pterosaurfrom China based on a near complete specimen

“…Lü and Fucha (2010) described Archaeoistiodactylus from the Middle Jurassic of China. However, thus poorly preserved partial skull shows a number of clear traits that suggests a misidentification of the material and that it does not represent an istiodactylid but a basal monofenestratan (Sullivan et al, 2014), an argument well supported by phylogenetic analysis of Zhou et al (2019).…”

“…We took the recent and comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of pterosaur relationships by Kellner et al (2019) and modified it with numerous characters being modified to be ordered (their 16, 22, 46, 52, 55, 56, 60, 75, 98, 108, 110, 116, 120, 125-127, 134, 135, 142-148, 150) and removing two pseudoreplicated characters (their 134 and 146-see Supplementary Data 1 for further details). We then coded the holotype of Luchibang xingzhe and the recently described istiodactylid Nurhachius luei (Zhou et al, 2019). The OTU for Linlongopterus jennyae, which was pruned in the final analyses of Kellner et al (2019) due to its status as a "wild card taxon," was retained within our analysis for the sake of thorough sampling.…”

A new darwinopteran pterosaur reveals arborealism and an opposed thumb

“…Some features previously regarded as diagnostic are either sexual or ontogenetic, or even taphonomic in nature. Archaeoistiodactylus is regarded as an undiagnostic wukongopterid, 55 and Changchengopterus as a non-darwinopteran monofenestratan. 54 Wukongopterinae new clade name…”

“…In shape, the teeth are slightly labiolingually compressed, with an elliptical cross-section -not as compressed as in istiodactylids. 55 Their long axis is recurved lingually.…”

Taxonomy of the Lonchodectidae (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea)

“…The phylogenetic analysis performed in that paper does not include any lonchodectid taxon. In the analysis by Zhou et al (2019), Ikrandraco avatar is the sister taxon to Lonchodraco giganteus.…”