Apatomerus (meaning "deceptive femur"), is a genus of extinct reptile known from a single fossil (KUVP 1199) from the Albian-age (Lower Cretaceous) Kiowa Shale of Kansas, USA. This bone, collected in 1893, was first identified as the thighbone of a crocodilian, but was described in 1903 by Samuel Wendell Williston as belonging to a pterosaur.[1] This identification held through the 1970s,[2] but has been abandoned. Recent summaries of pterosaur genera, such as Wellnhofer, 1991[3] and Glut, 2004[4] did not include it, and Mike Everhart, an authority on the rocks of the Western Interior Seaway (including the Kiowa Shale) identifies the bone as more likely the upper part of a plesiosaurian propodial (a limb bone).[5][6]
| Apatomerus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous,
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Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | †Sauropterygia |
| Order: | †Plesiosauria (?) |
| Genus: | †Apatomerus Williston, 1903 |
| Type species | |
| †Apatomerus mirus Williston, 1903
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See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Williston, Samuel W. (1903). "On the osteology of Nyctosaurus (Nyctodactylus), with notes on American pterosaurs". Fieldiana Geology. 2 (3): 125–163.
- ^ Wellnhofer, Peter (1978). Pterosauria. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie 19 (in German). Stuttgart: Fischer. p. 66. ISBN 978-3-437-30269-5.
- ^ Wellnhofer, Peter (1996) [1991]. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. pp. 1–192. ISBN 978-0-7607-0154-6.
- ^ Glut, Donald F. (2006). "Appendix One: Pterosaurs". Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia. 4th Supplement. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. pp. 583–633. ISBN 978-0-7864-2295-1.
- ^ Everhart, M.J. (2005). Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-253-34547-9.
- ^ Everhart, Mike (2007-05-29). "KANSAS PLESIOSAURS". Oceans of Kansas. Retrieved 2007-07-30.
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