Ornithocheirae is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...

pteranodontoid Pteranodontoidea (or pteranodontoids, from Greek meaning "toothless wings") is an extinct clade of ornithocheiroid pterosaurs from the Early to Late Cretaceous (early Valanginian to late Maastrichtian stages) of Asia, Africa, Europe, North Ame ...

pterosaur Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 ...

s from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145& ...

to the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

(

Valanginian In the geologic timescale, the Valanginian is an age or stage of the Early or Lower Cretaceous. It spans between 139.8 ± 3.0 Ma and 132.9 ± 2.0 Ma (million years ago). The Valanginian Stage succeeds the Berriasian Stage of the Lower Cretace ...

Turonian The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded b ...

stages) of

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. It was named by Harry Seeley in

1870 Events January–March * January 1 ** The first edition of ''The Northern Echo'' newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England. ** Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed. * January 3 – Construction of the Br ...

as a family that contains ''

Ornithocheirus ''Ornithocheirus'' (from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις", meaning ''bird'', and "χεῖρ", meaning ''hand'') is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the UK and possibly Morocco. Several species have ...

'' and its relatives. The name was emended to

Ornithocheiridae Ornithocheiridae (or ornithocheirids, meaning "bird hands") is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. These pterosaurs were among the last to possess teeth. Members that belong to this group lived from the Early to Late Cr ...

, to match the requirements of the

ICZN Code The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals. It is also informally known as the ICZN Code, for its publisher, the I ...

that a family-ranked clade should end with an -idae

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

. Brian Andres (2010) in his review of pterosaur

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological s ...

, defined the name Ornithocheirae phylogenetically, as a

node-based taxon Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional approach, in which taxon names are defined by a '' type'', which ...

consisting of the last common ancestor of ''

Anhanguera Anhanguera may refer to: People * Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva (1672–1740), a bandeirante Places in Brazil * Anhanguera, Goiás, a municipality in the state of Goiás * Anhanguera (district of São Paulo), a district in São Paulo * Parque Anhan ...

'' and ''

'' and all its descendants. Thus Ornithocheirae is defined to include two families, the

Anhangueridae Anhangueridae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They were among the last pterosaurs to possess teeth. A recent study discussing the group considered the Anhangueridae to be typified by a premaxillary crest and a later ...

and the

, following the opinion of

Alexander Kellner Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner (born September 26, 1961) is a Brazilian geologist and paleontologist who is a leading expert in the field of studying pterosaurs. His research has focused mainly on fossil reptiles from the Cretaceous Period, i ...

Kellner, A. W. A., (2003): Pterosaur phylogeny and comments on the evolutionary history of the group. pp. 105-137. — ''in'' Buffetaut, E. & Mazin, J.-M., (eds.): ''Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs''. Geological Society of London, Special Publications 217, London, 1-347 and Andres that these families should not be synonymized based on their original phylogenetical definitions.A preview that shows the cladogram without clade names
/ref> However, subsequent studies in 2019 have found Ornithocheirae to be a more inclusive group containing both Anhangueria and

Targaryendraconia Targaryendraconia is an extinct clade of lanceodontian pterosaurs that lived from the Early to Late Cretaceous period in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia. Classification Below is a cladogram following a topology by Pêgas ...

Classification

The cladogram below is a topology recovered by Jacobs ''et al.'' (2019). Their analysis is similar to the one by Andres & Myers in 2013, though they placed more genera within the families

and

, including '' Camposipterus'', ''

Cimoliopterus ''Cimoliopterus'' is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now England and the United States. The first known specimen, consisting of the front part of a snout including part of a crest, was discovered in the ...

'', ''

Maaradactylus ''Maaradactylus'' is a genus of anhanguerid pterodactyloid pterosaur known from the Lower Cretaceous period (Aptian to Albian stages) of the Romualdo Formation of northeastern Brazil. Discovery ''Maaradactylus'' is based on the Museu Paleon ...

'' and ''

Siroccopteryx ''Siroccopteryx'' is an extinct genus of anhanguerid pterodactyloid pterosaur, known from middle Cretaceous (between the Albian and Cenomanian stages, about 105 million years ago) sediments in modern-day Morocco. Some researchers, such as David ...

''. Many recently subsequent studies have used the term Ornithocheirae for a more inclusive group, which in turn contains the smaller groups

Anhangueria Anhangueria (or anhanguerians) is a group of pterosaurs belonging to the clade Pteranodontoidea. Fossil remains of this group date back from the Early to Late Cretaceous periods (Valanginian to Turonian stages), around 140 to 92.5 million years ...

and

.Borja Holgado, Rodrigo V. Pêgas, José Ignacio Canudo, Josep Fortuny, Taissa Rodrigues, Julio Company & Alexander W.A. Kellner, 2019, "On a new crested pterodactyloid from the Early Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula and the radiation of the clade Anhangueria", ''Scientific Reports'' 9: 4940 Pêgas, R.V., Holgado, B., Leal, M.E.C., 2019. "''Targaryendraco wiedenrothi'' gen. nov. (Pterodactyloidea, Pteranodontoidea, Lanceodontia) and recognition of a new cosmopolitan lineage of Cretaceous toothed pterodactyloids", ''Historical Biology'', 1–15. doi:10.1080/08912963.2019.1690482Zhou X., Pêgas R.V., Leal M.E.C. & Bonde N. 2019
"''Nurhachius luei'', a new istiodactylid pterosaur (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province (China) and comments on the Istiodactylidae."
''PeerJ'' 7:e7688 The cladogram below shows a specific study made by Holgado and Pêgas in 2020.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7103630 Pteranodontoids Fossil taxa described in 1870 Taxa named by Harry Seeley