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Apatorhamphus joshua-tedder

Apatoramphus ("Deceptive beak") is a genus of possible chaoyangopterid azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Early to Late Cretaceous Kem Kem Beds of Morocco. It is known from several beak fragments, with its name referring to the difficulty in determining wether the type specimen was an upper jaw or a lower jaw. Several previously discovered fossils have been referred to the genus, including snout fragments that had previously been assigned to an indeterminate pteranodontid, an indeterminate non-azhdarchid azhdarchoid, an indeterminate nyctosaurid, an indeterminate dsungaripterid, and the contemporary Alanqa. It is the first genus of pterosaur described in the 2020.

Apatoramphus gyrostega

Discovery and naming[]

During a visit in 2016 to the Tafilalt phosphate mine on the Aferdou N'Chaft plateau, near Hassi el Begaa, in Er Rachidia, British paleontologist David Michael Martill bought a piece of jaw from a pterosaur from miners. They had dug a tunnel in a thin fossil-containing layer on the edge of a quarry and finds were offered for sale there.

In 2020, the new genus and species Apatorhamphus gyrostega was named and described by James McPhee, Nizar Ibrahim, Alex Kao, David M. Unwin, Roy Smith, and David M. Martill. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek apatos, "deceptive", and ramphos, "snout", a reference to the difficulties one had in determining the taxonomic nature of the jaws and indeed whether it was an upper jaw or lower jaw. The species designation is a combination of the Greek gyros, "rounded", and stegè, "roof", a reference to the round cross section of the top of the muzzle.

The holotype, FSAC-KK 5010, was found in the Kem Kem Formation in Morocco, which dates to the Albian to Cenomanian of the Cretaceous. It consists of a large snout fragment.

McPhee and Martill referred various earlier finds to the species. This concerns the specimens FSAC-KK 5011, FSAC-KK 5012 and FSAC-KK 5013, found at Begaa in Morocco; the FSAC-KK 5014 specimen, also in a Moroccan collection but of unknown origin; BSP 1993 IX 338, a snout found in 1993, reported as a possible pteranodontian in 1999 and assigned to Alanqa in 2010; and CMN 50859, a lower jaw identified in 2011 as a possible member of the Dsungaripteroidea.

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