Pterosaurs of the Isle of Wight - Coloborhynchus, a pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Isle of Wight

Coloborhynchus,

a pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Isle of Wight

ornithocheirid-skeletal

Meaning

Key Snout

Wingspan

Up to 6 metres

Classification

Pterosauria Kaup, 1834
Pterodactyloidea Plieninger, 1901
Ornithocheiroidea Seeley, 1891sensuUnwin, 2003
Ornithocheiridae Seeley, 1870

Coloborhynchus Owen, 1874

Locations

Sudmoor Point

The only known specimen comprises the anterior portion of a pterosaur rostrum with an ‘upturned’ palatal surface displaying the bases of two anteriorly directed teeth broken at the base of the crown.

It is beach worn, having been found on the foreshore among flint beach pebbles. Although the original bone, tooth enamel and dentine is preserved, void space of the internal trabecular bone has become filled with slightly yellowish calcite and coarsely crystalline pyrite. There is also a thin veneer on the external surface of some of the bone.

MARTILL, DM 2015, ‘First occurrence of the pterosaur Coloborhynchus (Pterosauria, Ornithocheiridae) from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of the Isle of Wight, England’, Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, vol. 126, no. 3, pp. 377-380.