Aussiedraco molnari

Aussiedraco is a genus of pterosaur, an order of flying reptiles, that lived during the Early Cretaceous in what is now Australia. The genus belongs to the family Targaryendraconidae, a group of toothed pterodactyloids. It is known from a single dentary fragment that was unearthed in a limestone outcrop of the Albian-aged Toolebuc Formation. This dentary was first discovered in the 1970s in a site in western Queensland. It was initially described in 1980 by Australian paleontologists Ralph E. Molnar and Richard A. Thulborn as belonging to Ornithocheirus. Until it was recognized as coming from its own genus and species, this dentary was assigned to Ornithocheirus, Anhanguera, and Lonchodectes. In 2011, Brazilian paleontologists Alexander Kellner, Taissa Rodrigues, and Fabiana R. Costa scientifically described it as Aussiedraco molnari.

Aussiedraco molnari

Uncredited · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AussiedracoPBDB
Diet
piscivorePBDB, for Pterosauria
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Pterosauria
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Pterosauria

Time the record covers

At most 5.8 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 100.5 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 1 occurrence106–106 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106–106 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106–106 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences105–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences104–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences102–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences106.8 Mya100 Mya

1 occurrence of Aussiedraco molnari on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Toolebuc — 22.92°S, 140.58°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Aussiedraco molnari has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Aussiedraco molnari and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Aussiedraco molnari and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

14 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Aussiedraco molnari, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Aussiedraco molnari

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Aussiedraco molnari was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAussiedraco through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kellner et al. 2011