Boreopteridae

Boreopteridae (meaning "northern wings") is a group of pterodactyloid pterosaurs from the Aptian-age Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China.[1]

Boreopterids
Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, 124.6 Ma
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Skeletal diagram of Zhenyuanopterus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Order: †Pterosauria
Suborder: †Pterodactyloidea
Clade: †Pteranodontoidea
Clade: †Ornithocheiromorpha
Clade: †Lanceodontia
Family: †Boreopteridae
Lü et al., 2006
Type species
†Boreopterus cuiae
Lü & Ji, 2005
Genera

Classification

In 2006, Lü Junchang 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,[2] one possible example being Aetodactylus, which has been claimed to be similar to Boreopterus.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6] The true boreopterid clade was found to contain Boreopterus, Guidraco, and Zhenyuanopterus by Andres and colleagues in 2014,[6] and was then found to contain just Boreopterus and Zhenyuanopterus by Wu and colleagues in 2017,[7] a subsequently followed classification by recent studies.[8][9][10][11]

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.[6] 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.[8]

Paleoecology

The known taxa come from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning, 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;[2] this method of fishing was probably analogous to that of Platanista dolphins, which share a similar dentition.

References
  1. Junchang, Lü; Ji, S.; Yuan, C.; Ji, Q. (2006). Pterosaurs from China (in Chinese). Beijing: Geological Publishing House. p. 147 p.
  2. Mark Witton, 2011
  3. Myers, Timothy S. (2010). "A new ornithocheirid pterosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian–Turonian) Eagle Ford Group of Texas" (pdf). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 30 (1): 280–287. doi:10.1080/02724630903413099.
  4. Lü Junchang; Pu Hanyong; Xu Li; Wu Yanhua; Wei Xuefang (2012). "Largest Toothed Pterosaur Skull from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Western Liaoning, China, with Comments On the Family Boreopteridae". Acta Geologica Sinica. 86 (2): 287–293. doi:10.1111/j.1755-6724.2012.00658.x.
  5. Andres, B.; Myers, T. S. (2013). "Lone Star Pterosaurs". Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 103: 1. doi:10.1017/S1755691013000303.
  6. 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.
  7. Wu, W.-H.; Zhou, C.-F.; Andres, B. (2017). "The toothless pterosaur Jidapterus edentus (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea) from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota and its paleoecological implications". PLoS ONE. 12 (9): e0185486. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185486. PMC 5614613. PMID 28950013.
  8. 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
  9. Pentland, Adele H.; Poropat, Stephen F.; Tischler, Travis R.; Sloan, Trish; Elliott, Robert A.; Elliott, Harry A.; Elliott, Judy A.; Elliott, David A. (December 2019). "Ferrodraco lentoni gen. et sp. nov., a new ornithocheirid pterosaur from the Winton Formation (Cenomanian–lower Turonian) of Queensland, Australia". Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 13454. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-49789-4. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 6776501. PMID 31582757.
  10. 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
  11. Holgado, B.; Pêgas, R.V. (2020). "A taxonomic and phylogenetic review of the anhanguerid pterosaur group Coloborhynchinae and the new clade Tropeognathinae". Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. 65. doi:10.4202/app.00751.2020.
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