Gwawinapterus

Gwawinapterus beardi is known from a single fossil specimen, consisting only of the front half of a skull (upper and lower jaws). The tip of the snout is rounded and deep with a height of about . The tip is about from the front edge of the largest skull opening, or fenestra. Below this opening the upper jaw is about tall. The jaw was originally suggested to be a sutureless fusion of the premaxilla and maxilla of a reptile. Each upper jaw holds at least 26 teeth, eleven or twelve of them below the fenestra; the front of the tooth row has not been preserved and the fossil is broken at its end. The teeth are closely packed. The tooth crowns are small, tall and wide, flattened, and triangular with slightly curved edges. The edges are not serrated, but rounded. The teeth are very straight, showing no curvature to either the back or the middle. The more narrow single tooth roots are relatively long, about , for a total tooth length of about . The describers have identified two unique derived features (autapomorphies): a number of more than 25 teeth in the upper jaw and a tooth root more than twice as long as the crown. ==Discovery and identification==

In May 2005, amateur paleontologist Sharon Hubbard found a rock with bones and teeth visible on the surface on a beach near Collishaw Point at Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada. Accompanying her was Graham Beard, the President of the Vancouver Island Paleontology Museum Society at Qualicum Beach, who added the fossil to its collection. Beard brought the find to the attention of paleontologist Philip J. Currie. He in turn obtained the help of colleague Victoria M. Arbour who identified the specimen as a pterosaur new to science. In 2011, Arbour and Philip J. Currie described the specimen as the type species of Gwawinapterus beardi. The generic name is derived from ''Gwa'wina'', meaning "raven" in Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, in reference to the similarity of the skull with the stylised raven heads of the hamatsa masks of that tribe, and a Latinised Greek pteron, "wing". The specific name honours Beard. The rock, a calcite nodule, has a length of about . It holds the snout of the specimen, initially identified as the first pterosaur skull material found in Canada. Some of the surface of the bone is visible; partly it has been preserved as a cross-section or as an imprint. Erupted tooth crowns have disappeared but tooth sockets are still present and due to breakage tooth roots and replacement teeth are visible. A more thorough re-examination of the specimen, published in 2012, suggested that the specimen was in fact not a pterosaur but came from a species of saurodontid fish. ==See also==