Pterodactyloidea
Scientific name
- Scientific name
- Pterodactyloidea
How to say it in other languages
- Dutch
- Pterodactyloidea
- German
- Kurzschwanzflugsaurier
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Pterodactyloidea” page and Wikispecies (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Pterodactyloidea is the suborder of short-tailed pterosaurs. Their fossil record starts in the middle Jurassic. They became extinct in the K/T extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. Pterodactylus, Pteranodon and Quetzalcoatlus are in this suborder.
In 2014 remains of the earliest pterodactyloid was found in China. It is called Kryptodrakon. Its minimum age was 162.7 million years ago (mya). This is about five million years older than any previously known confirmed specimens.
Recent work shows that the group had more variety at the end of the Cretaceous than was thought earlier. In the early 2010s, several new pterosaur taxa were discovered dating to the late Cretaceous. These finds include some small sized pterosaur species.
At the end of the Cretaceous period, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which made all non-avian and most avian dinosaurs, as well as many other animals, extinct. The pterosaurs seem to have gone extinct in this event.
Classification
This is the classification of the different divisions of pterodactyloidea:
- Order Pterosauria
- Suborder Pterodactyloidea
- Superfamily Ornithocheiroidea
- Family Istiodactylidae
- Family Ornithocheiridae
- Coloborhynchus
- Family Pteranodontidae
- Pteranodon
- Superfamily Ctenochasmatoidea
- Pterodactylus
- Family Ctenochasmatidae
- Pterodaustro
- Superfamily Dsungaripteroidea
- Family Dsungaripteridae
- Dsungaripterus
- Superfamily Azhdarchoidea
- Family Lonchodectidae
- Family Tapejaridae
- Thalassodromeus
- Tupuxuara
- Family Azhdarchidae
- Quetzalcoatlus
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Pterodactyloidea” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.