Pterosaur remains from the cenomanian (late cretaceous) paralic deposits of Charentes (Western France)

International audienceRather numerous pterosaur remains, although mostly fragmentary, have been described from the Cretaceous of France (see Knoll and Bouveur, 2001; Mazin et al., 2001). They mainly consist of isolated bones collected in the Early Cretaceous and latest Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) strata, as illustrated by two recent papers on French pterosaurs (Buffetaut, 2001, 2004). The Cenomanian deposits of the Charentes region, in western France, have yielded a few pterosaur remains (Ne´raudeau et al., 2005; Vullo et al., 2005; Vullo, 2007) which are described herein. This material constitutes the only known Cenomanian occurrence of pterosaurs from France, and completes our knowledge of the earliest Late Cretaceous peri-Tethyan pterosaur fauna. Groups and taxa used in the present study are those defined by Unwin (2003) in his phylogenetic analysis