Pterosaur remains from the Lower Cretaceous Lianmuxin Formation (upper Tugulu Group) of the southern Junggar Basin (NW China)

ABSTRACT

The Lower Cretaceous Lianmuxin Formation (upper Tugulu Group) of the southern Junggar Basin has yielded a vertebrate assemblage of relatively low diversity that is dominated by sinemydid turtles. The assemblage currently includes a single pterosaur taxon, the dsungaripterid Lonchognathosaurus, known from a partial cranium and a partial left wing. Here two additional pterosaur specimens are reported, a well-preserved right distal carpal and a nearly complete but slightly crushed right femur. The carpal almost certainly belongs to a dsungaripterid pterosaur, which is distinct from Lonchognathosaurus. The femur shows many similarities to dsungaripterid femora and is probably also assignable to a dsungaripterid, although it possesses unusually thin bone-walls for the group. Due to a lack of overlapping skeletal material, it cannot be compared to Lonchognathosaurus. These specimens shed new light on the diversity of pterosaurs in the poorly known Lower Cretaceous Lianmuxin Formation of the southern Junggar Basin, indicating that probably more than one dsungaripterid taxon was present in the local assemblage.

KEYWORDS:

• Pterosauria
• Tugulu Group
• Lower Cretaceous
• Junggar Basin
• Dsungaripteridae
• Lianmuxin Formation

Acknowledgments

We want to express our gratitude to Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Pfretzschner (University of Tübingen), who sadly passed away at the end of September 2020 before this manuscript was finished. He led the SGP for many years, was always kind, and helped with invaluable advice. The fieldwork leading to the discovery of this specimen was carried out in cooperation with the Geological Survey No. 1 of Xinjiang, led by Prof. Zuo Xue-Yi, and with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Academia Sinica, led by Prof. Sun Ge. We would like to thank Henrik Stöhr (University of Tübingen), who took part in the excavation and skilfully prepared the pterosaur material. We thank David Hone (University of London), who kindly provided important literature on dsungaripterids. We are grateful to Alexander Averianov and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript as well as to editor Gareth Dyke for the very fast and helpful assistance during the publication process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).