Ctenochasmatidae
Ctenochasmatidae is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. They are characterized by their distinctively looking teeth, which is thought to have been used for filter-feeding. Ctenochasmatids lived from the Late Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous periods.
Ctenochasmatids | |
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Cast of a Ctenochasma elegans specimen | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Order: | †Pterosauria |
Suborder: | †Pterodactyloidea |
Clade: | †Euctenochasmatia |
Family: | †Ctenochasmatidae Nopsca, 1928 |
Type species | |
†Ctenochasma roemeri Meyer, 1852 | |
Subgroups | |
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The earliest known ctenochasmatid remains date to the Late Jurassic Kimmeridgian age. Previously, a fossil jaw recovered from the Middle Jurassic Stonesfield Slate formation in the United Kingdom, was considered the oldest known. This specimen supposedly represented a member of the family Ctenochasmatidae,[1] though further examination suggested it actually belonged to a teleosaurid stem-crocodilian instead of a pterosaur.[2]
Classification
Below is cladogram following a topology by Andres, Clark, and Xu (2014). They included three subfamilies within the Ctenochasmatidae: Ctenochasmatinae, Gnathosaurinae and Moganopterinae, while also including several basal genera.[2]
Ctenochasmatidae |
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In 2018, Longrich, Martill, and Andres recovered a very similar topology to the one by Andres, Clark, and Xu (2014), but they recovered more genera within the family, as shown below.[3]
Ctenochasmatidae |
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References
- Buffetaut, E. and Jeffrey, P. (2012). "A ctenochasmatid pterosaur from the Stonesfield Slate (Bathonian, Middle Jurassic) of Oxfordshire, England." Geological Magazine, (advance online publication) doi:10.1017/S0016756811001154
- Andres, B.; Clark, J.; Xu, X. (2014). "The Earliest Pterodactyloid and the Origin of the Group". Current Biology. 24: 1011–6. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.030. PMID 24768054.
- 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. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2001663