Saratovia

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Saratovia is a genus of pterosaurs that lived in what is now Russia during the Late Cretaceous. It has one known species, Saratovia glickmani, named after the city of Saratov and the discoverer Leonid S. Glickman.

The holotype is a fragment of the lower jaw, found in the Lysaya Gora 3 site of the Melovatka Formation. The fossil was uncovered in the 1940s and has been reclassified several times before being named Saratovia glickmani in 2025 by Averianov. It is now placed in a group called Targaryendraconia, though its exact relationships within the group are still unclear.

Saratovia would have been a large flying reptile with a narrow, long snout filled with teeth. It is set apart from its close relatives by a distinctive lower jaw feature: instead of a midline groove, it has a flat median platform covered with small holes (foramina) that connect to an internal canal along most of the jaw. It also has a thin hollow crest on the lower jaw. The preserved jaw is very narrow and tooth sockets are six in number, with outward- and forward-facing tooth bases.

The animal lived in a shallow sea that covered parts of Europe and Russia at the end of the Cenomanian age. It likely fed on fish (piscivory) and shared its environment with many marine reptiles and other pterosaurs. Saratovia is one of the youngest toothed pterosaurs in the fossil record, surviving until near the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary, a time when many marine animals went extinct due to a spike in atmospheric CO2.

The Melovatka Formation rocks where Saratovia was found also preserve other pterosaur remains, a variety of fish, sharks, turtles, plesiosaurs, and early birds. The Saratovia fossil is held at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg, cataloged as ZIN PHT-S50-1.