Note on a new locality with pterosaurs (Archosauria: Pterodactyloidea) from the Atacama Region, northern Chile

Abstract

A new locality with fossils of pterosaurs from Cerros Bravos, northeast of Copiapó, Atacama Region is reported, in outcrops of Quebrada Monardes Formation, a geological unit assigned to the Lower Cretaceous. Among the discovered remains are two incomplete first wing phalanges (one of them tridimensionally preserved), which have been assigned to pterodactyloids. This finding adds a second locality with pterosaur bones from Quebrada Monardes Formation. Future investigations of the pterosaurs of this locality will probably increase the knowledge about the diversity of these animals in the southwestern margin of Gondwana at the beginning of the Cretaceous period.