Tapejaroidea

Tapejaroids; Temporal range: ; Early - Late Cretaceous, 145–66 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Possible Late Jurassic record
	Skull fragments of Keresdrakon
	Fossil cast of Arambourgiania
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Order:	†Pterosauria
Suborder:	†Pterodactyloidea
Clade:	†Ornithocheiroidea
Clade:	†Tapejaroidea; Kellner, 1996
Subgroups
	†Dsungaripteridae; †Azhdarchoidea;

Tapejaroidea (or tapejaroids) is a group of pterosaurs belonging to the clade Ornithocheiroidea. Tapejaroids lived from the Early to Late Cretaceous periods, with one possible member, Tendaguripterus, extending the fossil range to the Late Jurassic period.^[1] Tapejaroidea contains two groups, the Dsungaripteridae and the Azhdarchoidea, which in turn includes the azhdarchids, the group that contains some of the largest flying animals. The group was named by Brazilian paleontologist Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner in 1996.

Classification

Tapejaroidea was named by paleontologist Alexander Kellner from Brazil in 1996,^[2]^[3] and in 2003 it was given a phylogenetic definition by Kellner himself as the most recent common ancestor of Dsungaripterus, Tapejara and Quetzalcoatlus, and all their descendants. Tapejaroidea, in Kellner's 2003 study, was recovered as the sister taxon of the Pteranodontoidea, both within the group Ornithocheiroidea, and consisting of the groups Dsungaripteridae and Azhdarchoidea.^[4] However, in a phylogenetic analysis made by Jaime Headden and Hebert Bruno Nascimento Campos in 2014, Tapejaroidea was recovered within the Azhdarchoidea, as a clade comprising the families Tapejaridae and Thalassodromidae.^[5] The cladogram of their analysis is shown below:

More recently, the original definition of Tapejaroidea has been used in a number of phylogenetic analyses conducted in 2019 and 2020, meaning that Tapejaroidea and Pteranodontoidea were once again recovered as the sister taxa and within the larger Ornithocheiroidea.^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] The cladogram below represents the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Kellner and colleagues in 2019, where they recovered Tapejaroidea as the more inclusive group containing both the Dsungaripteridae and the Azhdarchoidea.^[8]

Tapejaroidea

Dsungaripteridae

	Dsungaripterus weii

	Noripterus parvus

Azhdarchoidea

In 2021, Pêgas et al. named and officially registered two new clades: Azhdarchomorpha, the most inclusive clade containing Azhdarcho but not Tapejara or Thalassodromeus, and Alanqidae, containing Alanqa but not Chaoyangopterus or Azhdarcho. Their phylogeny is shown below:^[10]

Tapejaroidea

Dsungaripteridae

	Dsungaripterus

	Noripterus

	Thalassodromeus oberlii

	Thalassodromeus sethi

Tapejarinae

	Aymberedactylus

	Caupedactylus

Bakonydraco

"Huaxiapterus" corollatus

	Eopteranodon

	Sinopterus

Europejara

Tupandactylus

	Caiuajara

	Tapejara

Azhdarchomorpha

Alanqidae

	Alanqa

	Keresdrakon

Chaoyangopteridae

Shenzhoupterus

	Argentinadraco

	Xericeps

	Chaoyangopterus

	Jidapterus

	Lacusovagus

Radiodactylus

Azhdarchidae

Eurazhdarcho

	Aralazhdarcho

	Phosphatodraco

Zhejiangopterus

Azhdarcho

Quetzalcoatlinae

	Cryodrakon

	Quetzalcoatlus

	Albadraco

	Hatzegopteryx

	Aerotitan

	Arambourgiania

	Mistralazhdarcho

References

^ ^a ^b Unwin, David M.; Heinrich, Wolf-Dieter (1999). "On a pterosaur jaw from the Upper Jurassic of Tendaguru (Tanzania)". Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe. 2: 121–134.
^ Kellner, A.W.A. (1996). "Description of new material of Tapejaridae and Anhangueridae (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) and discussion of pterosaur phylogeny". Columbia University.
^ Buffetaut, Eric; Mazin, Jean-Michel (2003). Evolution and Palaeobiology of pterosaurs. Geological Society of London. ISBN 9781862391437.
^ Kellner, A. W. A. (2003). "Pterosaur phylogeny and comments on the evolutionary history of the group". Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 217 (1): 105–137. Bibcode:2003GSLSP.217..105K. doi:10.1144/GSL.SP.2003.217.01.10. S2CID 128892642.
^ Jaime A. Headden and Hebert B.N. Campos (2014). "An unusual edentulous pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Romualdo Formation of Brazil". Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology. 27 (7): 815–826. doi:10.1080/08912963.2014.904302. S2CID 129306469.
^ 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 doi:10.1038/s41598-019-41280-4
^ Kellner, Alexander W. A.; Caldwell, Michael W.; Holgado, Borja; Vecchia, Fabio M. Dalla; Nohra, Roy; Sayão, Juliana M.; Currie, Philip J. (2019). "First complete pterosaur from the Afro-Arabian continent: insight into pterodactyloid diversity". Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 17875. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54042-z. PMC 6884559. PMID 31784545.
^ ^a ^b Kellner, Alexander W. A.; Weinschütz, Luiz C.; Holgado, Borja; Bantim, Renan A. M.; Sayão, Juliana M. (19 August 2019). "A new toothless pterosaur (Pterodactyloidea) from Southern Brazil with insights into the paleoecology of a Cretaceous desert". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências. 91 (suppl 2): e20190768. doi:10.1590/0001-3765201920190768. ISSN 0001-3765. PMID 31432888.
^ Jiang, Shun-Xing; Zhang, Xin-Jun; Cheng, Xin; Wang, Xiao-Lin (2020). "A new pteranodontoid pterosaur forelimb from the upper Yixian Formation, with a revision of Yixianopterus jingangshanensis". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. doi:10.19615/j.cnki.1000-3118.201124.
^ Pêgas, R.V.; Holgado, B.; Ortiz David, L.D.; Baiano, M.A.; Costa, F.R. (August 21, 2021). "On the pterosaur Aerotitan sudamericanus (Neuquén Basin, Upper Cretaceous of Argentina), with comments on azhdarchoid phylogeny and jaw anatomy". Cretaceous Research. 129: Article 104998. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104998. ISSN 0195-6671. S2CID 238725853.