Tupuxuara
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tupuxuara Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Life restoration of Tupuxuara longicristatus
|
||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Species | ||||||||||||||
|
T. longicristatus Kellner & Campos, 1988 (type) |
Tupuxuara is a genus of large, crested, toothless pterosaur, originally described in 1988 from the Cretaceous Santana Formation of Brazil by Alexander Kellner and Diogenes Campos,[1] but since reported from North America as well. It was superficially similar in appearance to Pteranodon, mature individuals having a swept back crest arising from the snout, but its crest was larger and more pronounced than that of Pteranodon. Females of the species also had large crests, but their crests were more round. It is likely that Tupuxuara was a fish eater, and lived near the coasts of South America. The skull of the Tupuxuara measured a length of 900mm, the length of the entire body was 2.5 meters, and had a wingspan of 5.4 meters. Among pterosaurs, Tupuxuara is part of a group termed the Azhdarchoidea, but within Azhdarchoidea there is a controversy as to whether Tupuxuara is closer to the azhdarchids (the group that includes the giant Texan form Quetzalcoatlus) or to Tapejara and its relatives.
The first juvenile, found by palaeontologists from the University of Portsmouth in northeast Brazil and described by David Martill and Darren Naish in 2006 had not yet fully developed its crest, which supports the suggestion that the crest was a marker for sexual maturity.
[edit] References
- ^ Kellner, A.W.A., and Campos, D.A. (1988). "Sobre un novo pterossauro com crista sagital da Bacia do Araripe, Cretaceo Inferior do Nordeste do Brasil. (Pterosauria, Tupuxuara, Cretaceo, Brasil)." Anais de Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 60: 459–469. [in Portuguese]
