A new Liaoning pterosaur: Elanodactylus prolatus gen. et sp. nov.

[Rob Taylor <rjtaylor68@comcast.net>]

BRIAN ANDRES, JI QIANG (2008) A NEW PTEROSAUR FROM THE LIAONING PROVINCE OF 
CHINA, THE PHYLOGENY OF THE PTERODACTYLOIDEA, AND CONVERGENCE IN THEIR 
CERVICAL VERTEBRAE
Palaeontology 51 (2) , 453-469

Don't have this one yet, but here's the abstract:

The largest known flying organisms are the azhdarchid pterosaurs, a 
pterodactyloid clade previously diagnosed by the characters of their 
extremely elongate middle-series cervical vertebrae. The named species of 
the Azhdarchidae are from the Late Cretaceous. However, isolated 
mid-cervical vertebrae with similar dimensions and characters have been 
referred to this group that date back to the Late Jurassic, implying an 
almost 60 million year gap in the fossil record of this group and an 
unrecorded radiation in the Jurassic of all the major clades of the 
Pterodactyloidea. A new pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning 
Province of China, Elanodactylus prolatus gen. et sp. nov., is described 
with mid-cervical vertebrae that bear these azhdarchid characters but has 
other postcranial material that are distinct from the members of this group. 
Phylogenetic analysis of the new species and the Pterodactyloidea places it 
with the Late Jurassic vertebrae in the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous 
Ctenochasmatidae and reveals that the characters of the elongate azhdarchid 
vertebrae appeared independently in both groups. These results are realized 
though the large taxon sampling in the analysis demonstrating that the 
homoplastic character states present in these two taxa were acquired in a 
different order in their respective lineages. Some of these homoplastic 
characters were previously thought to appear once in the history of 
pterosaurs and may be correlated to the extension of the neck regions in 
both groups. Because the homoplastic character states in the Azhdarchidae 
and Ctenochasmatidae are limited to the mid-cervical vertebrae, these states 
are termed convergent based on a definition of the term in a phylogenetic 
context. A number of novel results from the analysis presented produce a 
reorganization in the different species and taxa of the Pterodactyloidea.