Dino card No. 0663 of 2,027

Forfexopterus

Say it: for-FEX-op-TER-us

Name means: “scissor wings”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Forfexopterus was a flying reptile that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now China. It had a long, low skull and many slender, curved teeth that it used to catch fish. With a wingspan of up to 3 metres, it was a large pterosaur for its time.1 3

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

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning, China1 3

Food

Fish3 1

Wingspan

1.78 to 3 m1 2

estimates; the larger specimen (HM V20) was a subadult, the smaller (SDUST V1003) was an adult

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 1.5 bicycles in a row

How big was Forfexopterus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Forfexopterus had a unique wing bone arrangement: the first bone of its wing finger was shorter than the second but longer than the third. No other pterosaur in its group had this.1

The larger fossil of Forfexopterus was a subadult, while the smaller one was an adult. This shows that different individuals grew at different rates.1 2

Forfexopterus lived in a lake environment. Fish and freshwater snail fossils were found on the same rock slab as one of its skeletons.1 2

Unlike many other ctenochasmatid pterosaurs, Forfexopterus did not have a spoon-shaped snout tip or crests on its head.1

The teeth of Forfexopterus were more curved than those of its close relatives. This may have helped it grab slippery fish.1

Forfexopterus had relatively small claws on its feet compared to its hand. Some scientists think its long foot bones helped it wade in water.1

AI-made picture of Forfexopterus — An AI-made picture of how Forfexopterus 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: Forfexopterus
Named by: Jiang et al. 20163
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Ctenochasmatidae3
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea3
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Rock formations: Jiufotang3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Forfexopterus was named in 2016 by Shunxing Jiang and colleagues. The first fossil was found by a local farmer near Lamadong Town, Liaoning, China, and later studied by scientists.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure why the larger Forfexopterus fossil was less mature than the smaller one. It might be due to differences between males and females, but more fossils are needed to know for sure.1 2

Where the facts come from

Forfexopterus (en.wikipedia.org)
FR - A new wing skeleton of Forfexopterus (Pterosauria: Ctenochasmatidae) from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota reveals a developmental variation (fr.copernicus.org)
Forfexopterus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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