Dino card No. 1638 of 2,027

Shenzhoupterus

Say it: SHEN-zhoo-PTER-us

Name means: “wing of the divine land (an old name for China)”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Shenzhoupterus was a toothless flying reptile that soared over ancient China 120 million years ago. It had a big head with a tall crest and a huge nostril hole that stretched above its eyes. With a wingspan as wide as a small car, it glided over lakes and rivers hunting for fish.1 2

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 Province, China (Jiufotang Formation)1 2

Food

Fish3

Wingspan

1.4 m1 2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 3 house cats nose to tail

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Shenzhoupterus had no teeth at all, which is rare among early Cretaceous pterosaurs.1 2

Its skull had a huge opening called the nasoantorbital fenestra that stretched above the eyes and even over the braincase.1 2

The crest on its head arched over the eyes and ended in a small point toward the back of the skull.1

Shenzhoupterus belongs to a group called Chaoyangopteridae, which are toothless pterosaurs that lived in what is now China.1 2

Its wingspan was about 1.4 meters (4.6 feet), similar to the length of a bicycle.1 2

The only known fossil is a complete, articulated skeleton found in the Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning, China.1 2

AI-made picture of Shenzhoupterus — An AI-made picture of how Shenzhoupterus 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: Shenzhoupterus
Named by: Lü et al. 20083
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Chaoyangopteridae3
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: Shenzhoupterus was named in 2008 by Lü Junchang, David Unwin, Xu Li, and Zhang Xingliao based on a complete skeleton found in Liaoning, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists debate whether Shenzhoupterus belongs in the family Chaoyangopteridae or within the Tapejaridae as a chaoyangopterine.1

Where the facts come from

Shenzhoupterus (en.wikipedia.org)
A new azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China and its implications for pterosaur phylogeny and evolution (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Shenzhoupterus 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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