Angustinaripterinae
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Rhamphorhynchidae is a group of early
pterosaur Pterosaurs are 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 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...
s named after ''
Rhamphorhynchus ''Rhamphorhynchus'' (, from Ancient Greek ''rhamphos'' meaning "beak" and ''rhynchus'' meaning "snout") is a genus of long-tailed pterosaurs in the Jurassic period. Less specialized than contemporary, short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs such ...
'', that lived in the
Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...
. The
family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
Rhamphorhynchidae was named in 1870 by
Harry Govier Seeley Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British paleontologist. Early life Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his fa ...
.Seeley, H.G. (1870). "The Orithosauria: An Elementary Study of the Bones of Pterodactyles." Cambridge, 135 p. Members of the group possess no more than 11 pairs of teeth in the rostrum, a deltopectoral crest that is constricted at the base but expanded at the distal end, and a bent phalange on the fifth toe. Rhamphorhynchidae traditionally contains two subfamilies: the Rhamphorhynchinae and the Scaphognathinae. While not recovered as distinct clades by all
analyses Analysis (: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (38 ...
, there do appear to be traits uniting members of each group. Rhamphorhynchines are more common, were lightly built, and had jaws ending in pointed tips that contained more teeth, which are often procumbent (pointed forward). Scaphognathines are comparatively quite rare, were more robust skeletally, and had shorter wing proportions. The broad-tipped skulls of scaphognathines held fewer teeth which were widely spaced and vertically oriented in the jaw.


Classification

The
cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...
(family tree) of rhamphorhynchids below is the result of a large
phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...
analysis published by Andres & Myers in 2013. Note that this study does not recover Scaphognathinae.


References

Toarcian first appearances Late Jurassic extinctions Pterosaur families {{pterosaur-stub