Weigeltisaurus is an extinct genus of weigeltisaurid reptile from the Late Permian Kupferschiefer of Germany and Marl Slate of England. It has a single species, originally named as Palaechamaeleo jaekeli in 1930 and later assigned the name Weigeltisaurus jaekeli in 1939, when it was revealed that Palaeochamaeleo was a preoccupied name. A 1987 review by Evans and Haubold later lumped Weigeltisaurus jaekeli under Coelurosauravus as a second species of that genus.[2] A 2015 reassessment of skull morphology study substantiated the validity of Weigeltisaurus and subsequent authors have used this genus.[3][4] Like other Weigeltisaurids, they possessed long rod-like bones that radiated from the trunk that were likely used to support membranes used for gliding, similar to extant Draco lizards.
The first remains of Weigeltisaurus jaekeli were described by Johannes Weigelt in 1930 from a specimen (SSWG 113/7) found in the Kupferschiefer near the town of Eisleben in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The specimen was purchased from a fossil dealer in 1913 by Otto Jaekel. Jaekel had considered the bony rods to be caudal fin spines of the coelacanth Coelacanthus granulatus that was also known from the Kupferschiefer, and so the rods were prepared away to expose the skeleton. Johannes Weigelt named the new species Palaeochamaeleo jaekeli both in honour of Jaekel and in reference to the similarity of the skull morphology to those of chameleons.
The same year, Friedrich von Huene noted the similarity of the specimen to Coelurosauravus elivensis from Madagascar, which had been described by Jean Piveteau in 1926, and concluded that both animals were closely related and represented climbing reptiles. In 1939, Oskar Kuhn noted that Palaeochamaeleo had already been used in a different publication in 1903, and proposed the new genus name Weigeltisaurus in honour of Weigelt.
In publications in 1976 and 1986, Günther Schaumberg described additional specimens of Weigeltisaurus from the Kupferschiefer of Germany. Due to the fact that the bony rods were also present on these skeletons, and the fact that the rods were only superficially similar to coelacanth spines, Schaumberg (1976) argued that they represented parts of the animals skeleton and were used for gliding flight, stating that the presence of the bones "...virtually provokes the attempt to explain its function for flight characteristics.".[5] In 1979, a specimen (TWCMS B5937.1) was described from Eppleton Quarry near Hetton-le-Hole, in Tyne and Wear in Northern England, in sediments that are part of the Marl Slate, a unit equivalent to the Kupferschiefer.[6] This specimen was given a detailed description by Susan E. Evans in 1982, in the publication she placed Coelurosauravus and Weigeltisaurus into the new family Coelurosauravidae.
In 1987, Evans and Haubold proposed that Weigeltisaurus jaekeli represented a species of Coelurosauravus, and synonymised Gracilisaurus ottoi, which had been described from a disarticulated postcranial skeleton from the Kupferschiefer by Weigelt in 1930 with Weigeltisaurus jaekeli.
In 2007, Schaumberg, Unwin and Brandt presented and discussed new skeleton details of Weigeltisaurus, the mechanism of unfolding and folding the patagium and presented thin-sections of the rods with lamellar bone.