Dino card No. 1864 of 2,027

Unwindia

Say it: un-WIN-dee-uh

Name means: “named after David Unwin, a British pterosaur expert”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Unwindia was a flying reptile that lived in what is now Brazil during the Early Cretaceous. It had a long, flat skull and seven pairs of teeth that were all the same shape. This pterosaur probably swooped over ancient seas to catch fish for dinner.1 3

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

Lived

120 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Santana do Cariri region, Ceará, northeastern Brazil1 2

Food

Fish3

Wingspan

3 m1

estimated from skull length

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 Unwindia compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Unwindia had only seven pairs of teeth, all in the front part of its snout, which is unusual for a pterosaur.1

Its teeth were all the same shape and size, unlike many other pterosaurs from the same area that had bigger teeth in the front.1

The name Unwindia honors David Unwin, a scientist who studies pterosaurs.1

The species name trigonus means 'triangular' in Greek, because its snout is triangular when you look at a cross-section.1

Unwindia lived about 119 to 113 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.3

Scientists think Unwindia might be the largest known member of a group called Lonchodectidae, if it belongs to that group.1

AI-made picture of Unwindia — An AI-made picture of how Unwindia 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: Unwindia
Named by: Martill 20113
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Ctenochasmatoidea3
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea3
Age of the rocks: 120 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Rock formations: Romualdo3
Countries: Brazil3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: A fossil dealer found the partial skull near Santana do Cariri, Brazil. David Martill named and described Unwindia trigonus in 2011.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly which group of pterosaurs Unwindia belongs to. Some think it is a ctenochasmatoid, while others suggest it might be a lonchodectid.1

Where the facts come from

Unwindia (en.wikipedia.org)
A new pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Santana Formation (Cretaceous) of Brazil (foreninger.uio.no)
Unwindia 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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