Giant Pterodactylus in the Cretaceous

All we have
are a pair of cervical vertebrae from the paratype (de Buisonjé 1980) named Santandactylus brasiliensis (Aptian, Brazil, Fig. 1). The closest match is to Pterodactylus longicollum (Fig. 1), otherwise known as Ardeadactylus (Bennett 2013), the largest Solnhofen pterosaur in the lineage of the holotype of Pterodactylus antiquus. Santandadactylus brasiliensis was the largest known pterosaur in the Pterodactylus lineage and extends this lineage past the Late Jurassic. The Aptian is in the late Early Cretaceous.

Okay, so it’s not a giant pterosaur.
But Santanadactylus brasiliensis is a giant Pterodactylus If it follows in the pattern of post-Jurassic Germanodactylus, then we might expect to see some cresting here when the skull becomes known. That little crested skull in the box in the lower left had corner is Normannognathus, which we’ll look at next.

Rumor
We’ll discuss the really giant Pterodactylus (much taller than a human) when the paper gets published.

As always, I encourage readers to see specimens, make observations and come to your own conclusions. Test. Test. And test again.

Evidence and support in the form of nexus, pdf and jpeg files will be sent to all who request additional data.

References
de Buisonjé, PH1980. Santanadactylus brasiliensis nov.gen. nov.sp. a longnecked, large pterosaur from the Aptian of Brazil. Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen B 83(2):145-172.