Dsungaripterus was a genus of pterosaur, with an average wingspan of 3 metres (9.8 ft). It lived during the Early Cretaceous, in China, where the first fossil was found in the Junggar Basin.

 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.

 Dsungaripterus weii had a wing span of 3 to 3.5 metres (9.8-11.5 ft). Its skull, forty to fifty centimetres 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 a meter 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.

 Dsungaripterus was by Yang classified as a member of the Dsungaripteridae.

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Tags: Вымершие рептилии, Мел, авеметатарзалии, аждархойды, архозавроморфы, архозавры, джунгариптероиды, диапсиды, монофенестраты, орнитохейройды, птеродактили, птерозавры

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 Eopteranodon (meaning "dawn Pteranodon (toothless wing)") is a genus of azhdarchoid pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Aptian-age Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Beipaio City, Liaoning, China.

 The genus was in 2005 named by Lü Junchang and Xang Xingliao. The type species is Eopteranodon lii.

 It is based on the type specimen or holotype BPV-078, an incomplete skeleton and skull. Its skull, including a large crest, was toothless and similar to that of Pteranodon. The skull lacks the point of the snout but it was in life less than 200 millimeters long (7.9 inches), and the animal had a wingspan of about 1.1 meters (3.6 feet). A second specimen, D2526, described in 2006, had a larger wingspan. Despite its similarities to Pteranodon, Eopteranodon was not placed into a family by its describers, who put it into the clade Pteranodontia as incertae sedis (uncertain position). Shortly thereafter, a phylogenetic study of all known Yixian pterosaurs by the same scientists found it to be close to the azhdarchoids, noted for the crested genera Tapejara and Tupuxuara, and the giant, long-necked Quetzalcoatlus. A further analysis of other recently discovered forms, in 2006 still considered basal to (having split off earlier than) azhdarchoids, helped the original authors, along with David Unwin, to place these species together with Eopteranodon in a new clade Chaoyangopteridae, the possible sister group of the Azhdarchidae.

 The Chaoyangopteridae are a family of pterosaurs within the Azhdarchoidea.

 The clade Chaoyangopteridae was first defined in 2008 by Lü Junchang and David Unwin as: "Chaoyangopterus, Shenzhoupterus, their most recent common ancestor and all taxa more closely related to this clade than to Tapejara, Tupuxuara or Quetzalcoatlus". Based on neck and limb proportions, it has been suggested they occupied a similar ecological niche to that of azhdarchid pterosaurs, though it is possible they were more specialised as several genera occur in Liaoning, while azhdarchids usually occur by one genus in a specific location. The Chaoyangopteridae are mostly known from Asia, though the possible member Lacusovagus occurs in South America and there are possible fossil remains from Africa.

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Tags: Вымершие рептилии, Мел, авеметатарзалии, аждархойды, архозавроморфы, архозавры, диапсиды, монофенестраты, орнитохейройды, птеродактили, птерозавры, чаоянгоптериды

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