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).
Aublysodon
The first skeletal material referred to an original "Aublysodon" species was a partial skull unearthed in Jordan, Montana in 1966 and described by Ralph Molnar in 1977/1978. The skull, specimen LACM 28741 at forty-five centimetres the length of an average human arm, bore pointed teeth attached to a long narrow snout. First thought to be a juvenile "Tyrannosaurus", then interpreted as a large dromaeosaurid, this "Jordan theropod" was given the name "Aublysodon molnaris" by Gregory S. Paul in 1988; in 1990 the name was by Paul emended to "Aublysodon molnari", applying the correct genitive. It was made a separate genus "Stygivenator" by George Olshevsky in 1995, but was later, in 2004, reinterpreted to be a juvenile "Tyrannosaurus rex" by Thomas Carr and Tom Williamson. Another partial skeleton from New Mexico, specimen OMNH 10131, was in 1990 considered to represent "Aublysodon", but later research by Thomas Carr and Tom Williamson first referred it to "Daspletosaurus" and ultimately to "Bistahieversor". In 1988 Paul also created another species when renaming "Shanshanosaurus huoyanshanensis" Dong 1977 into "Aublysodon huoyanshanensis". It probably represents a "Tarbosaurus" specimen.