Coloborhynchus

Coloborhynchus is a genus in the pterosaur family Ornithocheiridae, and is known from the Lower Cretaceous of Europe, North America, and South America.

In 1874 Richard Owen, rejecting the creation by Harry Govier Seeley of the genus Ornithocheirus, named a species Coloborhynchus clavirostris based on holotype BMNH 1822, a partial snout from the Cambridge Greensand. The genus name means "maimed beak", a reference to the damaged and eroded condition of the fossil; the specific name means "key snout", referring to its form in cross-section. Owen considered the defining trait of the genus to be the location of the front tooth pairs high on the side of the upper jaws. However, in 1913 Reginald Walter Hooley concluded that this location was an artefact of the erosion and that the genus was indistinguishable from Criorhynchus, the second genus Owen erected in 1874. Most later researchers assigned both forms to Ornithocheirus.

This changed in 1994 when Yuaong-Nam Lee named Coloborhynchus wadleighi for a snout found in 1992 in Texas. The revival of the genus implied that of several related species, in the meantime assigned to other genera, it had to be determined whether they belonged to Coloborhynchus. No consensus has developed on this matter, especially as the most complete material is from to be renamed forms as Anhanguera, whereas the type species and C. wadleighi are known from very fragmentary remains. Paleontologists David Unwin and André Veldmeijer have named several new Coloborhynchus species, whereas Brazilian researcher Alexander Kellner opposes their position. Species include:


 * C. clavirostris (Owen, 1874), the type species.
 * C. sedgwicki (Owen 1874) = Pterodactylus sedgwickii (Owen 1859) = Ornithocheirus sedgwicki (Newton 1888)
 * C. araripensis (Veldmeijer 2003) = Santanadactylus araripensis (Wellnhofer 1985) from Brazil. Its wingspan is in excess of three metres.
 * C. wadleighi (Lee 1993) from Texas. In 2009 it has been given the name Uktenadactylus by Kellner.
 * C. spielbergi (Veldmeijer 2003) from Brazil. It has an estimated wingspan of six metres; the specific name honours Steven Spielberg.
 * C. piscator (Veldmeijer 2003) = originally Anhanguera piscator (Kellner & Tomida 2000)