Pteranodon
"Pteranodon" was the first pterosaur found outside of Europe. Its fossils first were found by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1870, in the Late Cretaceous Smoky Hill Chalk deposits of western Kansas. These chalk beds were deposited at the bottom of what was once the Western Interior Seaway, a large shallow sea over what now is the midsection of the North American continent. These first specimens, YPM 1160 and YPM 1161, consisted of partial wing bones, as well as a tooth from the prehistoric fish "Xiphactinus", which Marsh mistakenly believed to belong to this new pterosaur (all known pterosaurs up to that point had teeth). In 1871, Marsh named the find ""Pterodactylus oweni"", assigning it to the well-known (but much smaller) European genus "Pterodactylus". Marsh also collected more wing bones of the large pterosaur in 1871. Realizing that the name he had chosen had already been used for Harry Seeley's European pterosaur species "Pterodactylus oweni" in 1864, Marsh re-named his giant North American pterosaur Pterodactylus occidentalis, meaning "Western wing finger," in his 1872 description of the new specimen. He also named two additional species, based on size differences: Pterodactylus ingens (the largest specimen so far), and Pterodactylus velox (the smallest).
Pterygotus
Though early discoveries of "Pterygotus" were confined to England and North America, fossil finds throughout the 20th century would help establish that "Pterygotus" as a genus achieved a nearly cosmopolitan distribution. The first eurypterid to be discovered in Australia was "Pterygotus australis", whose fossils were found in the Ludlow age Melbourne Group of the Dargile Formation. The fossils referred to "P. australis", consisting of four fragments making up about half of a segment that were discovered during the process of excavations beneath Melbourne during the construction of new drainage works for the city in 1899. The fragmentary fossils closely resemble fossils of "Erettopterus bilobus" (classified as a species of "Pterygotus" at the time), which might make their assignment to "Pterygotus" questionable.