Overview
Name meaning: Junggar Wing
Time Period: Aptian to Albian ( Early Cretaceous )
Locations: China - Junggar Basin
Taxonomy: Pterosauria - Pterodactyloidea - Dsungaripteridae
Subspecies: D. weii
Characteristics
At first sight, it looks like one of the most peculiar animals ever even its name is bizarre, Dsungaripterus. It’s a small pterosaur only around 3 feet tall with a wingspan of 10 feet. Its body was short and stout, adapted for most of its time on the ground. Its skull was around twenty inches long and featured two crests, one extending on the front of its beak and another extending from the back of the skull. Its beak keeled upward like a crowbar so it could lift shellfish and oysters out of the mud and pry them open. The front of its beak was toothless to help with catching slippery prey like fish while the back contained short blunt teeth meant for cracking rough objects like shells. One of the few known pterosaurs to be durophagous or adapted to eating hard-shelled animals
History
Dsungaripterus was first described in 1964 by Yang Zhongjian, from fossils from China’s Jungar formation, it was named after “Junggar wing”. The holotype IVPP V-2776 a partial skull and skeleton from the Lianmuqin Formation. Dsungaripterus has had two species named after it now invalid. Pterodactylus Brancai was renamed to Dsungaripterus Brancai in 1980 and was shortly invalidated. And in 1982 in South Korea D. parvus was found but more analysis concluded that it was actually a close relative of Noripterus. It's one species D. weii was named after C.M. Wei paleontologist and the first Chinese president of Huachung University
Media Deptictions
Jurassic World Evolution 2 Added in the Early Cretaceous Pack alongside Whuerusaurus, Minmi, and Kronosaurus. Dsungaripterus is the 3rd smallest pterosaur, has long dangly legs and it’s oddly shaped head make it different from the other pterosaurs in the game. Only problem is that for a Dsungaripterus it’s rather dull. It is entirely scally, has conical teeth, only eats fish and has no pattering aside from the crest.
