Dino card No. 0134 of 2,027

Apatorhamphus

Say it: a-PAT-oh-RAM-fus

Name means: “deceptive beak”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly Cretaceous to Late CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Apatorhamphus was a flying reptile that lived in what is now Morocco during the Cretaceous period. It had a long, toothless beak and probably ate fish. Scientists think it was a medium to large pterosaur with a wingspan of about 3 to 7 metres.1 2

Fun fact: pterosaurs flew over the dinosaurs, but they were their cousins, not dinosaurs themselves.

Lived

106 to 94 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Kem Kem beds, southeast Morocco3 1

Food

Fish3 2

Wingspan

3 to 7 m1 2

estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How wide were its wings?

wings as wide as 4 bicycles in a row

How big was Apatorhamphus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Apatorhamphus is only known from a few snout fragments, making it a mysterious pterosaur.2

Its name means 'deceptive beak' because scientists found it hard to identify the toothless beak.1

It lived alongside other pterosaurs like Alanqa and Afrotapejara in a landscape with rivers and lakes.2

The holotype fossil was bought from miners by paleontologist David Martill in 2016.2

Apatorhamphus might belong to the Chaoyangopteridae family, which includes toothless pterosaurs with long beaks.1

Scientists think large adults and young Apatorhamphus may have eaten different foods to avoid competition.2

AI-made picture of Apatorhamphus — An AI-made picture of how Apatorhamphus might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Apatorhamphus
Named by: McPhee et al. 20203
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Chaoyangopteridae3
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea3
Age of the rocks: 106 to 94 million years (Albian / Cenomanian)3
Rock formations: Ifezouane3
Countries: Morocco3
Fossil records: 3 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Apatorhamphus was named in 2020 by James McPhee and colleagues based on a snout fragment found in the Kem Kem beds of Morocco.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure if Apatorhamphus belongs to the Chaoyangopteridae family or another group of toothless pterosaurs.1

Where the facts come from

A new ?chaoyangopterid (Pterosauria: Pterodactyloidea) from the Cretaceous Kem Kem beds of southern Morocco (sciencedirect.com)
Apatorhamphus (en.wikipedia.org)
Apatorhamphus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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