Osteornis diomedeus Gervais, 1844

Rodrigues, Taissa & Kellner, Alexander Wilhelm Armin, 2013, Taxonomic review of the Ornithocheirus complex (Pterosauria) from the Cretaceous of England, ZooKeys 308, pp. 1-112 : 38-39

Osteornis diomedeus Gervais, 1844 (nomen dubium)

Osteornis diomedeus Gervais: Gervais 1844: p. 38

Cimoliornis diomedeus (Gervais): Owen 1846a: p. 545, fig. 230.

Ornithochirus [sic] diomedius [sic] (Gervais): Lydekker 1888: p. 13

Ornithocheirus diomedius [sic] (Gervais): Hooley 1914: p. 539

Ornithocheiridae incertae sedis: Wellnhofer 1978: 58

Holotype.

NHMUK PV 39418, distal end of a wing metacarpal.

Type locality.

Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, England.

Type horizon.

Chalk Formation (Cenomanian / Turonian).

Remarks.

Owen (1842) briefly described and figured a specimen (NHMUK PV 39418) that he considered to be the distal end of a tibia, belonging to a bird similar to an albatross, but he did not name it ( Owen 1842: fig. 2). Gervais (1844) agreed with this identification and named it Osteornis diomedeus . Latter, Owen (1846a) remarked that Gervais used the name Osteornis not in the sense of a genus, but as a name he applied it to all fossil bird bones, and redesignated NHMUK PV 39418 as the type of Cimoliornis diomedeus . The specimen is now considered a fragment of the distal part of the wing metacarpal of a pterosaur ( Owen 1859, 1874; Newton 1888; Wellnhofer 1978; Martill 2010). Hooley (1914) placed it provisionally in Ornithocheirus , while Wellnhofer (1978) referred it to Ornithocheiridae incertae sedis. Several authors ( Hooley 1914; Lydekker 1888; Wellnhofer 1978; Martill 2010) misspelled the specific epithet as diomedius.

The two known pterosaur clades from the Chalk Formation are the Lonchodraconidae and Cimoliopterus cuvieri , whose metacarpals are unknown. This material is quite fragmentary, and its structure does not allow species or genus-level identification. Therefore, Cimoliornis diomedeus is considered a nomen dubium.