Arambourgiania
|
Arambourgiania Temporal range: Late Cretaceous |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Holotype fossil cast | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Order: | Pterosauria |
| Suborder: | Pterodactyloidea |
| Family: | Azhdarchidae |
| Genus: |
Arambourgiania Nesov et al., 1987 |
| Species | |
|
A. philadelphiae (Arambourg, 1959) (type) |
|
| Synonyms | |
|
Titanopteryx Arambourg, 1959 (preoccupied) |
|
A. philadelphiae (Arambourg, 1959) (type)
Titanopteryx Arambourg, 1959 (preoccupied)
Arambourgiania is a pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Jordan. It was one of the largest members of this group.
In the early 1940s, a railway worker during repairs on the Amman-Damascus railroad near Russeifa found a two foot long fossil bone. In 1943 this was acquired by the director of a nearby phosphate mine, Amin Kawar, who brought it to the attention of a British archeologist, Fielding, after the war. This generated some publicity — the bone was even shown to Abdullah I of Jordan — but more importantly, it made the scientific community aware of the find.
In 1953 the fossil was sent to Paris, where it was examined by Camille Arambourg of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. In 1954, he concluded the bone was the wing metacarpal of a giant pterosaur. In 1959, he named a new genus and species: Titanopteryx philadelphiae. The genus name meant "titan wing" in Greek; the specific name refers to the name of Amman in Antiquity: Philadelphia. Arambourg let a plaster cast be made and then sent the fossil back to the phosphate mine; this last aspect was later forgotten and the bone was assumed lost.
In 1975 Douglas A. Lawson, studying the related Quetzalcoatlus, concluded the bone was not a metacarpal but a cervical vertebra.
In the eighties, Russian paleontologist Lev Nesov was informed by an entomologist that the name Titanopteryx had already been given by Günther Enderlein to a fly from the Simulidae family in 1934. Therefore, in 1987 he renamed the genus into Arambourgiania, honouring Arambourg. However, the name "Titanopteryx" was informally kept in use in the West, partially because the new name was assumed by many to be a nomen dubium.
...
Wikipedia