Pteranodon
While the first "Pteranodon" wing bones were collected by Marsh and Cope in the early 1870s, the first "Pteranodon" skull was found on May 2, 1876, along the Smoky Hill River in Wallace County (now Logan County), Kansas, USA, by Samuel Wendell Williston, a fossil collector working for Marsh. A second, smaller skull soon was discovered as well. These skulls showed that the North American pterosaurs were different from any European species, in that they lacked teeth and had bony crests on their skulls. Marsh recognized this major difference, describing the specimens as "distinguished from all previously known genera of the order Pterosauria by the entire absence of teeth." Marsh recognized that this characteristic warranted a new genus, and he coined the name "Pteranodon" ("wing without tooth") in 1876. Marsh reclassified all the previously named North American species from "Pterodactylus" to "Pteranodon". He considered the smaller skull to belong to "Pteranodon occidentalis", based on its size. Marsh classified the larger skull, YPM 1117, in the new species "Pteranodon longiceps", which he thought to be a medium-sized species in between the small "P. occidentalis" and the large "P. ingens". Marsh also named several additional species: Pteranodon comptus and "Pteranodon nanus" were named for fragmentary skeletons of small individuals, while "Pteranodon gracilis" was based on a wing bone that he mistook for a pelvic bone. He soon realized his mistake, and re-classified that specimen again into a separate genus, which he named "Nyctosaurus". "P, nanus" was also later recognized as a "Nyctosaurus" specimen.
History of Plymouth
The earliest human remains in the Plymouth area are from a number of caves around Plymouth Sound. The 'bone caves', located at Cattedown, Oreston, Turnchapel and Stonehouse, contain extensive Upper Palaeolithic deposits, including those of "Homo sapiens", some of the earliest such evidence in England. A reindeer bone from one of the Cattedown caves is dated 15,125 ± 390 years B.P. There is no public access to the caves, and they are not easily locatable or visitable. However their archaeological importance is very great, owing to both the geographical location of the Cattedown discovery, in a European context, and to the quantitative and qualitative nature and physical disposition of the human remains; this is one of the most important discoveries for the early history of anatomically modern humans in Europe. There is currently no evidence of "Homo neanderthalensis" having been found in caves at Cattedown, Oreston, Stonehouse or Mount Batten (Turnchapel).