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Lonchognathosaurus

Say it: LON-koh-NAY-thoh-SORE-us

Name means: “lance jaw lizard”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Lonchognathosaurus was a flying reptile with a long, pointed snout and needle-like teeth. It soared over lakes and rivers in what is now China during the Early Cretaceous Period, about 137 to 100 million years ago. It was not a dinosaur, but a pterosaur, a close cousin of dinosaurs.1 2

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

Lived

137 to 100 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Fossils were found in the Lianmuqin Formation, near Urumqi, in the southern Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, China.1 3

Food

Fish2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Its skull was about 400 mm (15.75 inches) long, and the tip of its upper jaw was needle-like.1

It had only eight teeth in each upper jaw, and they were spaced far apart, getting smaller towards the back.1 3

Unlike many other pterosaurs, the bottom edge of its upper jaw was straight, not curved.1

It had a crest on its head with grooves and a concave front edge.1

In 2022, a wing bone from Siberia was identified as possibly belonging to Lonchognathosaurus, suggesting it lived over a wider area than first thought.1

Some scientists think it might be the same as another pterosaur called Dsungaripterus, but others disagree.1 2

AI-made picture of Lonchognathosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Lonchognathosaurus 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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Myth buster

Myth: Lonchognathosaurus was a dinosaur.

Truth: It was a pterosaur, a flying reptile that is a close cousin of dinosaurs, but not a dinosaur itself.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Lonchognathosaurus
Named by: Maisch et al. 20044
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Dsungaripteridae4
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea4
Age of the rocks: 137 to 100 million years (Valanginian / Albian)4
Rock formations: Lianmuqin4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The first fossil, a partial skull and lower jaws, was found near Urumqi, China, and named by Michael Maisch, Andreas Matzke, and Sun Ge in 2004.1 3
Still debated: Scientists debate whether Lonchognathosaurus is a valid genus or the same as Dsungaripterus or Noripterus.1 2

Where the facts come from

Lonchognathosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
A new dsungaripteroid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of the southern Junggar Basin, north-west China - ADS (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu)
Lonchognathosaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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