Gwawinapterus beardi is a species of saurodontid ray-finned fish from the Late Cretaceous period of British Columbia, Canada.

Each upper jaw holds at least 26 teeth, eleven or twelve of them below the fenestra; the front of the tooth row has not been preserved and the fossil is broken at its end.

[1] The describers have identified two unique derived features (autapomorphies): a number of more than 25 teeth in the upper jaw and a tooth root more than twice as long as the crown.

[1] In May 2005, amateur paleontologist Sharon Hubbard found a rock with bones and teeth visible on the surface on a beach near Collishaw Point at Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Accompanying her was Graham Beard, the President of the Vancouver Island Paleontology Museum Society at Qualicum Beach, who added the fossil to its collection.

It probably originated in marine layers of the Northumberland Formation dating to the late Campanian stage, from about seventy million years ago.

Witton stated that this "fundamental distinction questions the pterosaurian nature of Gwawinapterus, and may indicate that istiodactylids remain a group exclusively known from the Lower Cretaceous.