Banguela
Name: Banguela
(Toothless one).
Phonetic: Ban-gway-lah.
Named By: Jaime A. Headden & Hebert
Bruno Nascimento Campos - 2014.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia,
Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea, Dsungaripteridae.
Species: B. oberlii (type).
Diet: Carnivore/Durophagovore.
Size: Skull reconstructed at about 60
centimetres long. Wingspan roughly estimated to be about 4
meters across.
Known locations: Brazil - Santana Formation
(Romualdo Member?).
Time period: Aptian/Albian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial jaw.
In
2005 a fragment of pterosaur
jaw bone was acquired by Andr� Jacques
Veldmeijer, and then later described as a species of
Thalassodromeus,
T. oberlii in Veldmeijers’
2006 dissertation.
However, the species was never actually official. Then in 2014
the fragment was described by Headden and Campos not as a species of
Thalassodromeus, but as an entirely new genus
which was named as
Banguela.
Banguela
is Brazilian Portuguese for ‘toothless one’, and is a reference
for the simple observation that the jaw fragment found for this
pterosaur has no tooth sockets. When described by Veldmeijer in
2005, a similarity to dsungaripterid pterosaurs was noted, but a
direct link was not established to the parcity of fossil material. In
the 2014 description however, Headden and Campos were more
confident in their establishment of Banguela as a
dsungaripterid
pterosaur.
Dsungaripterid
pterosaurs (i.e. Dsungaripterus,
Noripterus)
seem to have been
specialists focusing upon foraging for small animals such as molluscs
and crustaceans, possibly buried in soft sediments. To this end,
dsungaripterid pterosaurs would use their specialised beaks to dig out
small animals. Also, until the 2014 naming of Banguela,
all
dsungaripterids were known to have had blunt teeth in their mouths that
were presumably for breaking up the shells of molluscs and crustaceans
so that the soft inner bodies could be swallowed. The fact that
Banguela seems not to have had any teeth at all may
indicate that
Banguela was even more specialised than its
immediate relatives,
perhaps focusing upon soft bodied prey animals only.
Size
estimates for Banguela are highly speculative given
that the holotype
(and at the time of writing only) fossil of this genus is a partial
jaw bone. Still, scaling comparisons to other dsungaripterids
suggest that Banguela would have been a mid-sized
pterosaur with a
wingspan of approximately four meters. However only further remains,
ideally including the wing and body could give a more accurate figure.
Further reading
- An unusual edentulous pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Romualdo
Formation of Brazil. - Historical Biology. - Jaime A.
Headden & Hebert Bruno Nascimento Campos - 2014.
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