HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Boreopteridae (meaning "northern wings") is a group of
pterodactyloid Pterodactyloidea ( ; derived from the Greek words ''πτερόν'' (''pterón'', for usual ''ptéryx'') "wing", and ''δάκτυλος'' (''dáktylos'') "finger") is one of the two traditional suborders of pterosaurs ("wing lizards"), and contai ...
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 from the
Aptian The Aptian is an age (geology), age in the geologic timescale or a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early or Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or series (stratigraphy), S ...
-age
Lower Cretaceous Lower may refer to: * ''Lower'' (album), 2025 album by Benjamin Booker * Lower (surname) * Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) * Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England See also * Nizhny {{Disambiguation ...
Yixian Formation The Yixian Formation (; formerly Romanization of Chinese, transcribed as Yihsien Formation or Yixiang Formation) is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that spans the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous. I ...
of
Liaoning ) , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = Clockwise: Mukden Palace in Shenyang, Xinghai Square in Dalian, Dalian coast, Yalu River at Dandong , image_map = Liaoning in China (+all claims hatched).svg , ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
.


Classification

In 2006,
Lü Junchang Lü Junchang (; 1965 – 9 October 2018) was a Chinese palaeontologist and professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. An expert on Mesozoic reptiles, he described and named dozens of dinosaur and pterosaur taxa ...
and colleagues named the clade Boreopteridae for the clade containing the common ancestor of '' Boreopterus'' and '' Feilongus'' and all its descendants, which the authors reclassified as close relatives of the ornithocheirids. (''Feilongus'' had originally been considered a gallodactylid). Many possible boreopterids were subsequently described, one possible example being '' Aetodactylus'', which has been claimed to be similar to '' Boreopterus''. Originally considered close relatives of the ornithocheirids, many of these supposed boreopterids have been found to belong to other groups of the pterodactyloid lineage. In 2012, a phylogenetic analysis by Lü ''et al.'' divided the Boreopteridae into two subfamilies: Boreopterinae, comprising ''Boreopterus'' and ''Zhenyuanopterus'', and Moganopterinae, comprising ''Feilongus'' and '' Moganopterus''. However, in 2013, Andres & Myers found both ''Boreopterus'' and ''Feilongus'' to be closely related to ''Cycnorhamphus'', making them members of the Gallodactylidae as had been originally thought when ''Feilongus'' was discovered. A subsequent analysis including the other supposed boreopterids found that ''Boreopterus'' itself, and therefore the name Boreopteridae, was indeed a member of the ornithocheiroid clade, but that ''Feilongus'' was in fact a ctenochasmatoid closely related to ''
Gnathosaurus ''Gnathosaurus'' (meaning "jawed lizard") is a genus of ctenochasmatid pterosaur containing two species: ''G. subulatus'', named in 1833 from the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany, and ''G. macrurus'', known from the Purbeck Limestone of the UK. ...
''. The true boreopterid clade was found to contain ''Boreopterus'', '' Guidraco'', and '' Zhenyuanopterus'' by Andres and colleagues in 2014, and was then found to contain just ''Boreopterus'' and ''Zhenyuanopterus'' by Wu and colleagues in 2017, a subsequently followed classification by recent studies.Pêgas, R.V., Holgado, B., Leal, M.E.C., 2019. "On ''Targaryendraco wiedenrothi'' gen. nov. (Pterodactyloidea, Pteranodontoidea, Lanceodontia) and recognition of a new cosmopolitan lineage of Cretaceous toothed pterodactyloids", ''Historical Biology'', 1–15. doi:10.1080/08912963.2019.1690482


Phylogeny

The Boreopteridae was included in an analysis by Brian Andres and colleagues in 2014, where it was placed in a basal position within the Anhangueria. However, a topology recovered by Nicholas Longrich and colleagues in 2018 placed the family Boreopteridae as the sister taxon of the family Lonchodectidae, while also placed outside the Anhangueria.Longrich, N.R., Martill, D.M., and Andres, B. (2018)
"Late Maastrichtian pterosaurs from North Africa and mass extinction of Pterosauria at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary."
''PLoS Biology'', 16(3): e2001663.
Topology 1: Andres ''et al.'' (2014). Topology 2: Longrich ''et al.'' (2018).


Paleoecology

The known taxa come from the
Yixian Formation The Yixian Formation (; formerly Romanization of Chinese, transcribed as Yihsien Formation or Yixiang Formation) is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that spans the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous. I ...
of
Liaoning ) , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = Clockwise: Mukden Palace in Shenyang, Xinghai Square in Dalian, Dalian coast, Yalu River at Dandong , image_map = Liaoning in China (+all claims hatched).svg , ...
, which represented a lake system, suggesting that these animals occurred in freshwater habitats. They are thought to have foraged while swimming, trapping prey with their needle-like teeth;Mark Witton, 2011
/ref> this method of fishing was probably analogous to that of ''
Platanista South Asian river dolphins are toothed whales in the genus ''Platanista'', which inhabit the waterways of the Indian subcontinent. They were historically considered to be one species (''P. gangetica'') with the Ganges river dolphin and the Ind ...
'' dolphins, which share a similar dentition.


References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q4944952 Pteranodontoidea Early Cretaceous pterosaurs of Asia Taxa named by Lü Junchang Yixian fauna Pterosaur families