Anurognathids Temporal range: Middle Jurassic - Late Jurassic, 164–145.5 Ma |
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Life restoration of Anurognathus ammoni | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Order: | †Pterosauria |
Clade: | †Caelidracones |
Family: |
†Anurognathidae Nopcsa, 1928 |
Type species | |
Anurognathus ammoni Döderlein, 1923 |
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Subgroups | |
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The Anurognathidae were a group of small pterosaurs, with short tails or tailless, that lived in Europe, Asia, and possibly North America during the Jurassic period. Four genera are known: Anurognathus, from the Late Jurassic of Germany, Jeholopterus, from the Middle to Late Jurassic of China,Dendrorhynchoides, from the Middle Jurassic of China, and Batrachognathus, from the Late Jurassic of Kazakhstan. Bennett (2007) claimed that the holotype of Mesadactylus, BYU 2024, a synsacrum, belonged to an anurognathid.Mesadactylus is from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of the United States. Indeterminate anurognathid remains have also been reported from the Middle Jurassic Bakhar Svita of Mongolia.
A family Anurognathidae was named in 1928 by Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás (as the subfamily Anurognathinae) with Anurognathus as the type genus. The family name Anurognathidae was first used by Oskar Kuhn in 1967. Both Alexander Kellner and David Unwin in 2003 defined the group as a node clade: the last common ancestor of Anurognathus and Batrachognathus and all its descendants.