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Ornithocheirus
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Ornithocheirus

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Ornithocheirus (from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις", meaning bird, and "χεῖρ", meaning hand) is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the United Kingdom and possibly Morocco.

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Encyclopedic overview

7 sections
Contents
  • Discovery and naming
  • Formerly assigned species
  • Description
  • Classification
  • See also
  • Notes
  • References

Ornithocheirus (from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις", meaning bird, and "χεῖρ", meaning hand) is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the United Kingdom and possibly Morocco.

Several species have been referred to the genus, most of which are now considered as dubious species, or members of different genera, and the genus is now often considered to include only the type species, Ornithocheirus simus. Species have been referred to Ornithocheirus from the mid-Cretaceous period of North America, Europe and South America, but O. simus is known mostly from the United Kingdom, though a specimen referred to O. cf. simus is also known from the Late Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of Morocco.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ornithocheirus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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