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    "headline": "Hintighernia edingerae: a Cambridge museum skull is a new pterosaur; Europe may be its family’s cradle",
    "description": "Hintighernia edingerae, a 105-million-year-old tapejarid pterosaur, was named from a skull in Cambridge's Sedgwick Museum.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-11T05:50:00+00:00",
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    "articleSection": "Science",
    "keywords": "Cambridge, Hintighernia, Pterosaur, Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Tapejaridae",
    "articleBody": "A broken pterosaur skull that sat in a Cambridge museum drawer for more than a century belongs to a species no one had named. Paleontologists have called it Hintighernia edingerae, a tapejarid that lived in what is now England about 105 million years ago, and they say it moves the family’s early history toward Europe. The study, led by Rubi V. Pêgas of the Federal University of ABC in Brazil with colleagues from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the University of Southampton and the Regional University of Cariri, appears in the November 2026 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. An old specimen with a new name The fossil, a partial cranium catalogued as CAMSM B54406, is held by the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. It comes from the Cambridge Greensand, a thin bed of reworked sediment at the base of the West Melbury Marly Chalk Formation in eastern England. The skull has been shuffled between names before. In the 19th century Harry Govier Seeley placed fragments from the same collection in the genus Ornithostoma, while this piece, which shows a broken crest, was linked to Ornithocheirus. In 1914 Reginald Walter Hooley moved it to Ornithostoma, according to the recorded history of the specimen, and it was long filed under Ornithostoma sedgwicki. The new team says two features set it apart: the outline of the openings at the top rear of the skull, known as the upper temporal fenestrae, and a long, sturdy ridge running down the middle of the supraoccipital bone at the back of the head. Those traits were enough to name a new genus and species. A brain like a Brazilian cousin’s The researchers ran the skull through micro-CT scanning to model the cavity that once held the brain. The shape closely matches that of Tapejara wellnhoferi, the Brazilian species that gave the family its name. Tapejarids were small to medium pterosaurs, many with bony crests rising from the snout and parrot-like beaks, and earlier braincase studies suggest they leaned heavily on sharp eyesight. The team also re-sorted other Cambridge Greensand bones. An isolated snout tip is tentatively assigned to the new genus, labeled cf. Hintighernia. Further remains are referred to tapejarids in general. Ornithostoma sedgwicki itself is reclassified as a chaoyangopterid and trimmed to four jaw fragments, and a third, separate azhdarchoid species is proposed from jaws and neck bones. Why it matters: rewriting the family map The finding cuts against a long-held picture. The family is best known from Brazil, and standard summaries of the group still note that its most primitive genera come from China, pointing to an Asian origin. Pêgas and colleagues argue instead that Europe was an early hotspot of tapejarid diversity and a possible starting point for two branches: the sinopterines of eastern Laurasia and the tapejarines of South America. Put the dates side by side and the claim is easier to see. The family’s fossil record runs from roughly 125 to 94 million years ago, so a 105-million-year-old English skull falls in the middle third of that span, already showing a brain built like its Brazilian relative’s. Europe has been turning up surprising old bones lately, from a thumb-sized vertebra that may be Iberia’s oldest dinosaur to fossils that reshape migration stories, like the teeth suggesting monkeys rafted across the Atlantic. Limits The new species rests on a single partial skull, and the snout fragment is only tentatively linked to it. The Cambridge Greensand is reworked sediment, so bones were tumbled and mixed before burial. The European-origin idea is framed as a hypothesis about where the group diversified early, and it will need more complete skeletons from Europe, Africa and Asia to test. For now, CAMSM B54406 stays in the Sedgwick Museum, with a new label 150-odd years after the first scholars handled it. Further reading Pêgas et al. 2026, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society Wikipedia: Hintighernia Wikipedia: Tapejaridae Illustrative image. Image: Tim Evanson, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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