The validity of Pachyrhamphus

[mhanson54@comcast.net (Mike Hanson)]

I've been reworking the Pterosaur Species List and in the process noticed the 
following:
Fitzinger (1843) proposed the name *Pachyrhamphus* for *Pterodactylus 
crassirostris* Goldfuss, 1831 since the previous generic name proposed by 
Giebel in 1852, *Brachytrachelus*, was preoccupied by a genus of Circulionid 
beetle (what else would you expect?) named by Schöherr in 1847. Later on Wagner 
(1861) proposes *Scaphognathus* since he believes *Pachyrhamphus* is 
preoccupied by a Tyrannid flycatcher named by Gray in 1840. The only problem is 
that it appears the genus given by Gray was spelled *Pachyramphus* (without the 
h after the r) and "Pachyrhamphus" used in this sense was only a common 
misspelling which had no real nomenclatural significance. So, supposing that 
*Pachyrhamphus* has not undergone a 50-year period of disuse (since I don't 
know whether or not this is the case), does this mean that *Scaphognathus* is a 
junior synonym and should be abandoned in favour of *Pachyrhamphus*, or is 
there some justification in not doing so due to the extreme similarity of the tw
 o name
s and the confusion caused by misspellings? If not, then the only way to 
justify the validity of *Scaphognathus* is to determine if it is a *nomen 
oblitum* or petition the ICZN to reject *Pachyrhamphus* in favour of 
*Scaphognathus*.