Eudimorphodontidae is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

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 ...

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 from the

Late Triassic The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch (geology), epoch of the Triassic geologic time scale, Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between annum, Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch a ...

(early

Norian The Norian is a division of the Triassic geological period, Period. It has the rank of an age (geology), age (geochronology) or stage (stratigraphy), stage (chronostratigraphy). It lasted from ~227.3 to Mya (unit), million years ago. It was prec ...

Rhaetian The Rhaetian is the latest age (geology), age of the Triassic period (geology), Period (in geochronology) or the uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Triassic system (stratigraphy), System (in chronostratigraphy). It was preceded by the N ...

age) of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

.Barrett, P. M., Butler, R. J., Edwards, N. P., & Milner, A. R. (2008). Pterosaur distribution in time and space: an atlas. ''Zitteliana'', 61-107

/ref> It was named by

Peter Wellnhofer Peter Wellnhofer (born Munich, 1936) is a German paleontologist at the Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie in Munich. He is best known for his work on the various fossil specimens of ''Archaeopteryx'' or "Urvogel", the first known bird. ...

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd ...

to include '' Eudimorphodon ranzii''. Some

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 ...

analyses suggested that Eudimorphodontidae is a

junior synonym In taxonomy, the scientific classification of living organisms, a synonym is an alternative scientific name for the accepted scientific name of a taxon. The botanical and zoological codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. ...

Campylognathoididae 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 ...

,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, 1-347Dalla Vecchia, F.M. (2009). "Anatomy and systematics of the pterosaur ''Carniadactylus'' (gen. n.) ''rosenfeldi'' (Dalla Vecchia, 1995)." ''Rivista Italiana de Paleontologia e Stratigrafia'', 115(2): 159-188. however more comprehensive analyses found Eudimorphodontidae to be basal to Macronychoptera that includes

and more derived pterosaurs (

Breviquartossa 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 earlie ...

).A preview that shows the cladogram without clade names
/ref> Wang ''et al.'' (2009) found Eudimorphodontidae to include six species (the monospecific ''

Peteinosaurus ''Peteinosaurus'' ( ; meaning "winged lizard") was a prehistoric genus of pterosaur. It lived in the late Triassic period in the late Norian age (about 218-215 million years ago),Müller R.T., Ezcurra M.D., Garcia M.S., Agnolín F.L., Stocker M.R ...

'', '' Raeticodactylus'' and ''

Caviramus ''Caviramus'' is a genus of caviramid pterosaur from the Late Triassic (early Rhaetian-age) lower Kössen Formation of the Northern Calcareous Alps of Switzerland. The genus was in 2006 named by Nadia Fröbisch and Jörg Fröbisch. The typ ...

'', and three species of ''

Eudimorphodon ''Eudimorphodon'' is an extinct genus of pterosaur that was discovered in 1973 by Mario Pandolfi in the town of Cene, Lombardy, Cene, Italy and described the same year by Rocco Zambelli. The nearly complete skeleton was retrieved from shale depos ...

''), but they didn't defined the clade. Brian Andres (2010, in press) define Eudimorphodontidae and found ''

'' to be most closely related to it. Furthermore, he found

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

''Eudimorphodon'' clade (unlike Wang ''et al.'', 2009 and Dalla Vecchia, 2009), and defined two subfamilies within Eudimorphodontidae. The Eudimorphodontinae includes all taxa more closely related to ''Eudimorphodon ranzii'' than to ''

Raeticodactylus filisurensis ''Raeticodactylus'' is a genus of non-pterodactyloidea, pterodactyloid pterosaur from the late Norian-early Rhaetian-age Upper Triassic lower Kössen Formation (about 213-209 million years ago)Müller R.T., Ezcurra M.D., Garcia M.S., Agnolín F. ...

'' while the Raeticodactylinae includes all taxa more closely related to ''Raeticodactylus filisurensis'' than to ''Eudimorphodon ranzii''. More recently, ''Raeticodactylus'' and ''Caviramus'' were moved into their own family,

Raeticodactylidae Raeticodactylidae is a family of eudimorphodontoid eopterosaurian pterosaurs that lived in Switzerland during the Late Triassic. The family includes '' Caviramus'', and the type genus '' Raeticodactylus'', which are both known from the Kössen ...

. The below cladogram follows that analysis. In 2020 however, a study upheld by Matthew G. Baron about early pterosaur interrelationships found no evidence to support the existence of the clade

Eopterosauria Eopterosauria is a proposed clade of basal pterosaurs from the Triassic. The term was first used in Andres ''et al.'' (2014) to include ''Preondactylus'', ''Austriadactylus'', ''Peteinosaurus'' and Eudimorphodontidae. Inside the group were two o ...

(the clade of which eudimorphodontids might also belong to) as an early diverging clade within the Pterosauria. He additionally found no evidence to support a monophyletic Eudimorphodontidae, therefore, he sunk both ''

Arcticodactylus ''Arcticodactylus'' is a genus of basal pterosaur living during the Late Triassic in the area of present-day Greenland. Its only species was previously attributed to ''Eudimorphodon'', and its closest relatives may have been ''Eudimorphodon'' or ...

'' and ''Carniadactylus'' within a clade he called Caviramidae, and found ''Eudimorphodon'' to be the sister taxon of the Novialoidea.Matthew G. Baron (2020). "Testing pterosaur ingroup relationships through broader sampling of avemetatarsalian taxa and characters and a range of phylogenetic analysis techniques". PeerJ. 8: e9604. doi:10.7717/peerj.9604. PMC 7512134. .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q4120026 Pterosaurs Norian first appearances Rhaetian extinctions Pterosaur families