Arthurdactylus is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of pterodactyloid

Pterodactyloidea

Pterodactyloidea forms one of the two suborders of pterosaurs , and contains the most derived members of this group of flying reptiles...

 pterosaur

Pterosaur

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight...

 from the Early Cretaceous

Early Cretaceous

The Early Cretaceous or the Lower Cretaceous , is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous...

-age Crato Formation

Crato Formation

The Crato Formation is a geologic formation of Early Cretaceous age in northeastern Brazil's Araripe Basin. It is an important Lagerstätte for palaeontologists. The strata were laid down mostly during the early Albian age, about 108 million years ago, in a shallow inland sea...

 of Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. It was a large animal, with a wingspan of 4.6 meters.

It was in 1994 named by Eberhard Frey and David Martill in honor of Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

, who featured large reptilian pterosaurs in his novel The Lost World

The Lost World (Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine during the months of April 1912-November 1912...

, about a professor finding prehistoric animals still alive on a plateau in South-America. They first spelled the species name as Arthurdactylus conan-doylei, thus with a forbidden diacritic sign, and themselves carried out the necessary emendation to conandoylei in 1998. The holotype

Holotype

A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...

 is SMNK 1132 PAL, a reasonably complete skeleton, lacking only a skull, neck, sternum and some caudal vertebrae. The specimen, adult or nearly so, was preserved on a plate and is slightly crushed. Arthurdactylus had, compared to the torso length of 22 centimetres, relatively long wings and especially long wing fingers, perhaps much more so than any other pterodactyloid. The hind limbs are however, weakly developed.

The describers assigned Arthurdactylus to the Ornithocheiridae

Ornithocheiridae

Ornithocheiridae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They were among the last pterosaurs to possess teeth.-Classification:Listing of genera after Unwin , except where noted.* Family Ornithocheiridae** ?Aetodactylus...

. According to Brazilian paleontologist Alexander Kellner

Alexander Kellner

Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner is a Liechtensteinian/Brazilian paleontologist, a leading expert in the field of the study of pterosaurs....

, who uses this concept in a different sense, Arthurdactylus can be best indicated as closely related to the Anhangueridae.

Literature

• Frey E. and Martill D. M. (1994), "A new Pterosaur from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian) of Brazil", Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 194: 379–412