Beipiaopterus Beipiaopterus Beipiaopterus is a genus of ctenochasmatid pterosaur (flying reptile) from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation (Aptian) in the People's Republic of China. The genus was named in 2003 by Lü Junchang. The generic name is derived from Beipiao City in Liaoning Province and a Latinised Greek "pteron", "wing". The specific epithet honours paleontologist Professor Chen Peiji. The type and only species is based on holotype BPM 0002, a crushed partial skeleton of a subadult individual on a slab, missing the skull. It includes four cervical, fourteen dorsal, three sacral and nine caudal vertebrae, a complete left wing and two
Plesiosauroidea Plesiosauroidea Plesiosauroidea (; Greek: plēsios/πλησιος 'near' or 'close to' and sauros/σαυρος 'lizard') is an extinct clade of carnivorous plesiosaur marine reptiles. They have the longest neck to body ratio of any reptile. Plesiosauroids are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. After their discovery, some plesiosauroids were said to have resembled "a snake threaded through the shell of a turtle", although they had no shell. Plesiosauroidea appeared at the Early Jurassic Period (late Sinemurian stage) and thrived until the K-Pg extinction, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The oldest confirmed plesiosauroid is "Plesiosaurus" itself, as all younger taxa were