Found in the Romualdo Formation of the Santana Group in northern Brazil, Araripesaurus is a genus of pterosaur that belongs to the suborder Pterodactyloidea and goes back to the Aptian and Albian of the Early Cretaceous. A. castilhoi serves as the type species.
Discovery and Naming
Llewellyn Ivor Price, a Brazilian paleontologist, named the genus in 1971. Araripesaurus castilhoi is the type species. The Araripe Plateau is mentioned in the genus name. The particular name is in recognition of the collector Moacir Marques de Castilho, who gave the fossil-containing chalk nodule in 1966. A partial wing, comprising distal pieces of the radius and ulna, carpals, all metacarpals, and several fingers, make up the holotype, DNPM (DGM 529-R). It was a subadult specimen. An estimated 2.2 meters (7 feet 3 inches) was its wingspan. Price added two more potential specimens to the species; they are both composed of broken wings and are about one-third bigger than the holotype. Araripesaurus santanae, a second species described by Peter Wellnhofer in 1985, and two other unidentified species that Wellnhofer identified were transferred to Anhanguera in 1990 by Kellner and called Anhanguera santanae.
Classification
Araripesaurus was assigned to the Ornithocheiridae by Price. The Santana Formation's earliest known pterosaur was Araripesaurus. When more complete remains from other species were named later, it became unclear if those species may be the same as Araripesaurus. In 1991, scientist Alexander Kellner came to the conclusion that Araripesaurus was the same as Santanadactylus and that the only more generic classification for it might be a pterodactyloid since it lacked any distinctive characteristics. After reevaluating the genus in 2000, Kellner determined that it could not be synonymous with Santanadactylus due to the extreme absence of autapomorphies (unique features). Based on a cladistic study, the genus was positioned as being more derived than Istiodactylus and closer to Anhangueridae. According to Kellner, Araripesaurus shared morphological similarities with Anhanguera piscator, while being far smaller.
A reconstruction of Araripesaurus.
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