Anurognathidae

Anurognathus ammoniacal chasing the butterfly -like lacewing Kalligramma haeckeli

• Solnhofen
• Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China

The Anurognathidae are a family of small pterosaur that lived from the Middle Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous to Laurasia.

Features

In contrast to all other pterosaurs, the animals had a frog -like, short, high- domed skull with a rounded snout and large skull windows. The paired premaxillary bone ( premaxilla ) was merged and formed with a steep ascending projection the front boundary of the nasal openings. Her few teeth were small, pointed, and were by far the jaws. Probably were the Anurognathidae insectivores. When fossil of Chinese Jeholopterus to hair-like skin structures can be detected.

Like all original pterosaurs had the Anurognathidae relatively short metacarpals. The wingspan was only more than half a meter. Compared to the Dimorphodontidae their wings were longer but in terms of body size. The fifth toe of the hind legs was thin, long and settled abduct. The tail was short, deformed and consists in Anurognathus only eleven vertebrae. Still not include the Anurognathidae to the short-tailed pterosaurs ( Pterodactyloidea ), but have been previously split off from the main line of the pterosaurs.

Genera

• Anurognathus
• Batrachognathus
• Dendrorhynchoides
• Jeholopterus

Swell

• David M. Unwin: The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time. PI Press, New York, 2006, ISBN 0 - 13-146308 -X
• Peter Wellhofer: pterosaurs. Mosaic, Wittenberg 1980. ISSN 0138-1423