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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Spathagnathus roeperi is a newly named pterosaur species described in 2025 from a partial upper jaw found in Bavaria in 1993. The fossil is not a newly unearthed skeleton: it is a small, tooth-bearing snout fragment that researchers formally described and analyzed more than three decades after its discovery.
What is Spathagnathus roeperi?
Spathagnathus roeperi is a new genus and species of pterosaur—a flying reptile—classified in the family Ctenochasmatidae and subfamily Gnathosaurinae. Its formal description appeared online on June 6, 2025, in the peer-reviewed journal PalZ (volume 99, pages 339–353; the issue is dated September 2025). The study describes the fossil and analyzes its evolutionary relationships; it does not report a newly excavated complete animal.
Where and when was the fossil found?
The fossil was discovered in 1993 during systematic excavations at the Brunn quarry, near Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany. Brunn is in the northeastern part of the Solnhofen Archipelago region. The specimen had been mentioned and figured in earlier work, but the 2025 paper provides its formal taxonomic description and phylogenetic analysis.
The jaw came from Plattenkalk layer 1, the lowest layer in the local sequence. The paper places the site in the Ebenwies Member of the Torleite Formation and dates the rock to the Subeumela Subzone of the Beckeri Ammonite Zone, in the Late Kimmeridgian of the Upper Jurassic. It describes the ancient setting as a semi-tropical shallow sea with reef complexes and depressions where laminated limestone formed.
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What does the fossil show?
The holotype—the specimen used to define the species—is a partial front section of the upper jaw, including its tooth row. It is preserved in a slab and counterslab and is held by the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich under catalogue number SNSB-BSPG 1993 XVIII 1006.
The preserved jaw fragment measures 36.9 mm in length from front to back. That measurement applies only to the fossilized rostrum, not to the full animal: no complete skeleton or wingspan is known from this specimen.
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- The front of the snout widens sideways into a spatula-like shape.
- Its curved teeth point laterally and become more robust toward the back of the preserved jaw.
- The teeth have carinae—distinct ridges or cutting edges—and irregular, strongly veined enamel covering roughly the upper half of each crown.
These features are among the evidence for placing the animal in Gnathosaurinae.
What might Spathagnathus roeperi have eaten?
The shape and texture of the teeth led the authors to discuss a possible preference for hard prey, sometimes described as durophagy. That is an interpretation based on anatomy, not a directly observed behavior. A jaw fragment alone does not establish whether the animal crushed shells, filter-fed, or ate a particular prey item.
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How does it relate to other pterosaurs?
The paper’s phylogenetic analysis identifies Tacuadactylus luciae, a pterosaur from Uruguay, as the sister taxon of Spathagnathus roeperi. The two share features including carinae and veined enamel. The authors caution that more fossils are needed to assess whether these similarities primarily reflect shared ancestry or convergent adaptations associated with feeding.
The paper also raises a possible European origin and early diversification for this group, but presents that idea cautiously because the Late Jurassic pterosaur fossil record is sparse beyond better-known regions. It is a proposed interpretation, not a settled account of the group’s global history.
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Why the discovery matters
A partial jaw can carry useful information when its shape and teeth preserve distinctive features. Here, those details allowed researchers to name a new pterosaur and compare it with relatives, while the specimen’s limits set clear boundaries on what can be inferred about its size and diet. The study’s formal description adds a taxon from the Solnhofen Archipelago region to the record; fuller fossils would be needed to clarify the animal’s anatomy and feeding ecology.
Primary source: the 2025 description of Spathagnathus roeperi in PalZ.
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