A New Tapejarid Pterosaur from the English Cretaceous

Among the most interesting and exciting of pterosaurs – in my humble opinion – are the tapejarids, a short-snouted, toothless, often elaborately crested group vaguely akin to the sometimes gigantic, stork-faced azhdarchids. I like tapejarids enough that I’ve written about them on numerous occasion here (see the links below) and indeed they’re one of several pterosaur groups that I’ve had the privilege of studying. Caption: reconstructed life appearance of the new tapejarid Hintighernia edingerae, informed by data preserved in other tapejarids, with schematic skull and brain reconstruction at right. Image by Matheus Gadelha, from Pêgas et al. (2026). Today see the publication of what I and my colleagues think is a new tapejarid, one that has implications for the distribution, evolutionary history and biology of this group. It’s also not really a ‘new’ fossil at all, having been known and discussed in the literature since the late 1800s.Introducing Hintighernia. Dubbed Hintighernia…