 The type species, "L. compressirostris", is based on NHMUK 39410, a partial upper jaw from the Turonian-age Upper Cretaceous Upper Chalk near Kent.Richard Owen named in 1851 as a species of "Pterodactylus"; it was transferred to "Ornithocheirus" in 1870 by Harry Govier Seeley, before becoming the type species of "Lonchodectes" in Reginald Walter Hooley's 1914 review of "Ornithocheirus".Confusingly, this species was also long regarded, incorrectly, as the type species of "Ornithocheirus".