Spathagnathus roeperi occupied the so-called Solnhofen Archipelago throughout the Late Jurassic date, around 150 million years earlier.

“The Solnhofen limestones of southern Germany are commonly acknowledged as one of the most efficient fossil Konservat-Lagerstätten understood to date,” stated Dr. Alexandra Fernandes, a paleontologist at the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and the American Museum of Natural History, and her coworkers.

“The regions and beds discovered in the location in between Solnhofen and Regensburg have actually been constantly checked out for some 200+years (throughout today day), yielding extraordinary product at a respected rate, and therefore providing a distinctively extensive insight into a subtropical shallow marine paleoenvironment of the Late Jurassic.”

“The high paleobiodiversity of the faunal assemblage in the overarching Solnhofen area is credited to its initial depositional setting in anxieties within a shallow marine reef environment at the northern coast of the Tethys Ocean, so that this setting has actually been called the fossil assemblage of the Solnhofen Archipelago in the current literature.”

A piece of Spathagnathus roeperi‘s rostrum with toothrow was discovered throughout organized excavations in the Brunn quarry near the German city of Regensburg.

“The region of Brunn represents the earliest region of the Solnhofen complex, with just one pterosaur having actually been explained from this area to date,” the paleontologists stated.

According to their phylogenetic analysis, Spathagnathus roeperi came from the Gnathosaurinae, a little subgroup within the pterosaur household Ctenochasmatidae.

The brand-new flying reptile was likewise the sis types of the ctenochasmatid pterosaur Tacuadactylus luciae from Uruguay.

“The Solnhofen limestones are plentiful in Late Jurassic fossil vertebrates, with pterosaurs being no exception,” the scientists stated.

“Within the acknowledged plenitude of the pterosaurs within this assemblage, although ctenochasmatid remains are fairly plentiful, gnathosaurines are limited.”

Spathagnathus roeperi represents the earliest incident of a gnathosaurine and adds to the paleoenvironmental stratigraphic variety for the Gnathosaurinae within the total fossil assemblage of the Solnhofen Archipelago.

“Furthermore, the brand-new types contributes to the recognized variety of ctenochasmatids in the Late Jurassic and highlights the significance of this early radiation of pterodactyloid pterosaurs throughout this time,” the researchers concluded.

Their paper was released this month in the journal PalZ

_____

A.E. Fernandes et alA brand-new types and the earliest event of the Gnathosaurinae (Pterosauria) from the Late Kimmeridgian of Brunn, Germany. PalZreleased online June 6, 2025; doi: 10.1007/ s12542-025-00725-0