Ornithodira
Avemetatarsalia is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. The two most successful groups of avemetatarsalians were the dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. Both dinosaurs and pterosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period, shortly after avemetatarsalians as a whole. The name Avemetatarsalia was first established by British palaeontologist Michael Benton in 1999. An alternate name is Pan-Aves, or "all birds", in reference to its definition containing all animals, living or extinct, which are more closely related to birds than to crocodilians.

User:Stan Shebs Public domain (uploaded by User:Mitternacht90 ) User:Anagoria Kabacchi Fernando Losada Rodríguez Mike… · 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- Also called
- ornithodiranPBDB
- Sits inside
- AvemetatarsaliaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Diapsida
Time the record covers
At least 236 million years on record.
The record covers at least 237 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 0 Mya.
12,000+ occurrences of Ornithodira on record. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
12,000 occurrences read- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassic3%
- Early Jurassic5%
- Middle Jurassic3%
- Late Jurassic10%
- Early Cretaceous17%
- Late Cretaceous44%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene2%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene3%
- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene8%
- Holoceneunder 1%
These 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. The read hit its cap, so every figure above is a floor and the shares are of the occurrences read. More on what this infers.
Found in
at least 1070 formations
- Morrison Formation643
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group544
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group530
- Fruitland/Kirtland Formation256
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group252
- Lance Formation · Montana Group200
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The named rock units Ornithodira has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. The read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 1,046 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 1,796 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
2,154 taxa- Aves36 sites
- Bovidae33 sites
- Reptilia32 sites
- Clarias28 sites
- Mammalia28 sites
- Gazella26 sites
- Alcelaphus buselaphus22 sites
- Hipparion22 sites
- Theropoda22 sites
- Cercopithecidae21 sites
- Osteichthyes21 sites
- Tragelaphus21 sites
- Hippopotamus amphibius20 sites
- Canis19 sites
- Struthio19 sites
- Alcelaphini18 sites
- Amphibia18 sites
- Hyaenidae18 sites
- Equus17 sites
- Libytherium maurusium17 sites
- Ceratotherium simum16 sites
- Hystrix16 sites
- Struthio camelus16 sites
- Crocodylia15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 953 sites for Ornithodira, and this reads 240 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
at least 3,495 references- Dinozavri severnoi Yevrazii: Novye dannye o sostave kompleksov, ekologii i paleobiogeografii [Dinosaurs of northern Eurasia: new data about assemblages, ecology, and paleobiogeography]354
- Paleontological survey, resource assessment, and mitigation plan for the Bisti-Star Lake Area, northwestern New Mexico300
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections200
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota197
- The paleogeographic and stratigraphic distribution of ceratopsids (Ornithischia) in the Upper Judith River Group of western Canada188
- Vertebrate microsite assemblages (exclusive of mammals) from the Foremost and Oldman Formations of the Judith River Group (Campanian) of southeastern Alberta: an illustrated guide157
- Stratigraphy and paleontology of the Cloverly Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of the Bighorn Basin area, Wyoming and Montana118
- Paleontology of the Judith River Formation (Campanian) of Dinosaur National Park, Alberta, Canada: evidence from vertebrate microfossil locality116
- Vertebrate faunal changes through Lancian and Puercan time in southern Wyoming114
- Miocene and Pliocene birds from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina105
- Paleoecological analysis of the vertebrate fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain region, U.S.A.85
- Distribution and paleobiological significance of dinosaur tracks from the Jindong Formation (Albian) in Kosong County, Korea63
Each of the 12,000 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. That read hit its cap, so each count is a floor. 3,483 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 Ornithodira
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Stan Shebs Public domain (uploaded by User:Mitternacht90 ) User:Anagoria Kabacchi Fernando Losada Rodríguez Mike…
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ornithodira 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 itAvemetatarsalia through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gauthier 1986