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''Cimoliopterus'' is a genus of pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Cretaceous of England, United Kingdom and Texas, United States.〔Timothy S. Myers (2015). "First North American occurrence of the toothed pteranodontoid pterosaur ''Cimoliopterus''". ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology''. Online edition: e1014904. doi:10.1080/02724634.2015.1014904.〕 The type species, ''Cimoliopterus cuvieri'', was previously considered parts of several different genera depending on author, but received its own genus in 2013. ==Discovery and naming== In 1851, James Scott Bowerbank named and described some remains found in a chalk pit at Burham near Maidstone in Kent, as a new species of ''Pterodactylus'': ''Pterodactylus cuvieri''. The specific name honours Georges Cuvier. The same pit had generated remains of ''Pterodactylus giganteus''.〔Bowerbank, J.S., 1851, "On the pterodactyles of the Chalk Formation", ''Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London'' 19: 14–20〕 In 1869, Harry Govier Seeley renamed the species into ''Ptenodactylus cuvieri'',〔Seeley, H.G., 1869, ''Index to the fossil remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia, from the Secondary System of Strata arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge''. Deighton, Bell and Co., Cambridge, xxiii + 143 pp〕 at the same time disclaiming the name which makes it invalid by modern standards. In 1870, Seeley had realised that the generic name ''Ptenodactylus'' had been preoccupied and renamed the species into ''Ornithocheirus cuvieri''.〔Seeley, H.G., 1870, ''The Ornithosauria: an elementary study of the bones of pterodactyls, made from fossil remains found in the Cambridge Upper Greensand, and arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge''. Deighton, Bell, and Co., Cambridge, xii + 135 pp〕 In 1874 Richard Owen renamed it into ''Coloborhynchus cuvieri'';〔Owen, R. 1874, ''Monograph on the fossil Reptilia of the Mesozoic Formations''. Palaeontographical Society, London, 14 pp〕 in 2001 David Unwin into ''Anhanguera cuvieri''.〔Unwin, D.M., 2001, "An overview of the pterosaur assemblage from the Cambridge Greensand (Cretaceous) of Eastern England", ''Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe'' 4: 189–221〕 In 2013, Taissa Rodrigues and Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner created a separate genus: ''Cimoliopterus''. The generic name combines Κιμωλία, ''Kimolia'', the white clay of the island Kimolos (''kimolia'' means "chalk" in New Greek) with a Latinised Greek πτερόν, ''pteron'', "wing". The type species remains ''Pterodactylus cuvieri'', the resulting ''combinatio nova'', new combination name, is ''Cimiliopterus cuvieri''.〔 The holotype, NHMUK PV 39409, had been found in a layer of the Chalk Formation dating from the Cenomanian-Turonian. It consists of a snout fragment. It was originally preserved with a single tooth in the right snout tip, but this had disappeared by 2007.〔 ''Ornithocheirus brachyrhinus'' Seeley 1870 and ''Pterodactylus fittoni'' Owen 1859 share several features with ''C. cuvieri'', and it can therefore not be excluded that they are the same taxon. However, they are too incomplete to be definitely referred to ''C. cuvieri'', so were by Rodrigues and Kellner considered nomina dubia. In 2015 was described a new species, ''Cimoliopterus dunni'' from the Britton Formation on the north-central Texas, United States, which dates from the Cenomanian stage, in the early Late Cretaceous. The holotype specimen consists in a partial rostrum with the 26 preserved alveoli and bears a thin premaxillary crest that begins over the fouth alveoli, the tip of the snout is blunt and the rostrum have an angle of 45° respect to the anterior part of the palate. This find extends the distribution of the genus to North America and shows that the pterosaur faunas from Europe and North America still had contact during the middle Cretaceous. The phylogenetic analysis included in the description of this species indicates that ''Cimoliopterus'' is a basal pteranodontoid closely related with ''Aetodactylus'', which has been found too in Cenomanian strata from Texas.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cimoliopterus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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