Pterodaustro

Pterodaustro (from Greek , and Latin , ) is a genus of ctenochasmatid pterodactyloid pterosaur from South America. Its fossil remains dated back to the Early Cretaceous period, about 105 million years ago.

== Discovery and naming == left|thumb|Skeletal mount of Pterodaustro at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History The first fossils, among them the holotype PVL 2571, a thigh bone, were discovered during the late 1960s by José Bonaparte in the Lagarcito Formation, situated in the San Luis Province of Argentina, and dating from the Albian. The genus was subsequently reported in Chile from the Quebrada La Carreta locality, in the Sierra da Candeleros, Segunda Región de Antofagsta, but this turned out to be erroneous; the fossils belong another pterosaur, the dsungaripterid Domeykodactylus ceciliae. At the Argentine site, the just large "Loma del Pterodaustro", since then, during several expeditions, over 750 Pterodaustro specimens have been collected, 288 of them having been catalogued until 2008. This makes the species one of the best known pterosaurs, with examples from all growth stages, from egg to adult.