Tapejaroidea
Pterodactyloidea is one of the two traditional suborders of pterosaurs, and contains the most derived members of this group of flying reptiles. They appeared during the middle Jurassic Period, and differ from the basal rhamphorhynchoids by their short tails and long wing metacarpals. The most advanced forms also lack teeth, and by the late Cretaceous, all known pterodactyloids were toothless. Many species had well-developed crests on the skull, a form of display taken to extremes in giant-crested forms like Nyctosaurus and Tupandactylus. Pterodactyloids were the last surviving pterosaurs when the order became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, together with the non-avian dinosaurs and most marine reptiles.

régine debatty Public domain (uploaded by User:Gadfium ) Helder da Rocha User:Ghedoghedo User:Ghedoghedo Henk Caspers… · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- NeoazhdarchiaPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Pterosauria
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Pterosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pterosauria
Time the record covers
At least 42 million years on record.
The record covers at least 143.1 Mya to 100.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 149.2 Mya to 72.2 Mya.
30 occurrences of Tapejaroidea on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
30 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
7 formations
- Romualdo Formation · Santana Group9
- Crato Formation · Santana Group8
- Jiufotang Formation · Jehol Group7
- Öösh Formation1
- Tendaguru Formation1
- Goio-Erê Formation · Caiuá Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Tapejaroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tapejaroidea and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Tapejaroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
111 taxa- Afrotapejara zouhri2 sites
- Anhanguera robustus2 sites
- Araripemys barretoi2 sites
- Barbosania gracilirostris2 sites
- Ornithocheiridae2 sites
- Sinopterus dongi2 sites
- Susisuchus anatoceps2 sites
- Thalassodrominae2 sites
- Tupandactylus imperator2 sites
- Tupuxuara longicristatus2 sites
- Alanqa saharica1 site
- Anhanguera1 site
- Anhanguera araripensis1 site
- Anhanguera blittersdorffi1 site
- Anhanguera ligabuei1 site
- Anhanguera piscator1 site
- Anhanguera santanae1 site
- Apatorhamphus gyrostega1 site
- Araripecarcinus ferreirae1 site
- Araripemys1 site
- Araripesuchus1 site
- Araripesuchus gomesii1 site
- Araripia florifera1 site
- Arthurdactylus conandoylei1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Tapejaroidea, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
28 references- A new tapejarid (Pterosauria, Azhdarchoidea) from the mid-Cretaceous Kem Kem beds of Takmout, southern Morocco2
- Pterosaurs of the Crato Formation2
- New pterosaur material from the Upper Jurassic of Tendaguru (Tanzania), Africa1
- New postcranial elements of the Thalassodrominae (Pterodactyloidea, Tapejaridae) from the Romualdo Formation (Aptian-Albian), Santana Group, Araripe Basin, Brazil1
- A new unusual tapejarid (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from the Early Cretaceous Romualdo Formation, Araripe Basin, Brazil1
- New information on Tupandactylus imperator, with comments on the relationships of Tapejaridae (Pterosauria)1
- A new species of Tupuxuara (Thalassodromidae, Azhdarchoidea) from the Lower Cretaceous Santana Formation of Brazil, with a note on the nomenclature of Thalassodromidae1
- Catastrophic failure in a pterosaur skull from the Cretaceous Santana Formation of Brazil1
- A new azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian?) of Brazil1
- A new species of Huaxiapterus (Pterosauria: Tapejaridae) from the Early Cretaceous of western Liaoning, China1
- New material of pterosaur Sinopterus (Reptilia: Pterosauria) from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation, Western Liaoning, China1
- A new species of Huaxiapterus (Pterosauria: Pterodactyloidea) from the Lower Cretaceous of western Liaoning, China with comments on the systematics of tapejarid pterosaurs1
Each of the 30 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 16 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Tapejaroidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- régine debatty Public domain (uploaded by User:Gadfium ) Helder da Rocha User:Ghedoghedo User:Ghedoghedo Henk Caspers…
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tapejaroidea was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itNeoazhdarchia through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Kellner 1989)