Campylognathoides - Phylogeny

Phylogeny

Plieninger in his later publications assigned Campylognathus to the "Rhamphorhynchoidea". As this suborder is a paraphyletic assemblage of not specially related basal pterosaurs, this classification merely states the negative fact that it was not a pterodactyloid. A positive determination was first attempted by Baron Franz Nopcsa who in 1928 assigned the genus to the subfamily Rhamphorhynchinae within the family Rhamphorhynchidae. After a period in which very little work was done on pterosaur systematics, in 1967 Oskar Kuhn placed Campylognathoides in its own subfamily within the Rhamphorhynchidae, the Campylognathoidinae. However, in 1974 Peter Wellnhofer concluded that it was placed in a more basal position in the phylogenetic tree, below the Rhamphorhynchidae. In the early twenty-first century this was confirmed by the first extensive exact cladistic analyses. In 2003 both David Unwin and Alexander Kellner introduced a clade Campylognathoididae; within Unwin's terminology this clade is the sister clade of the Breviquartossa within the Lonchognatha; applying Kellner's terminology it is the most basal off-shoot within the Novialoidea. There is no material difference between the two positions.

According to the analyses Campylognathoides would be closely related to Eudimorphodon, to which it is similar in skull, sternum and humerus form. This was confirmed by Padian in 2009, though Padian also pointed out several basal features present in Eudimorphodon but lacking in Campylognathoides. In 2010 an analysis was published by Brian Andres showing that Eudimorphodon together with Austriadactylus formed a very basal clade, leaving Campylognathoides as the only known member of the Campylognathoididae. Other recent phylogenetic analyses confirm these results, and suggest that Campylognathoides is more derived than all Triassic-aged pterosaurs, as well as the Early Jurassic Dimorphodon and Parapsicephalus. Campylognathoides is the basalmost member of the Novialoidea which is defined as a node-based taxon consisting of the last common ancestor of Campylognathoides, Quetzalcoatlus and all its descendants.