Rhamphorhynchidae

Rhamphorhynchus, live reconstruction

• Northern Hemisphere

The Rhamphorhynchidae are a family of long-tailed pterosaurs, whose fossil evidence was found mainly in the northern hemisphere in sedimentary rocks from the Lower to the Upper Jurassic.

Features

The animals were small to medium in size. Her skull was lower and sleeker than the Anurognathidae and Dimorphodontidae. The cranial window were compared to the other two families, small. Usually the bony eye socket was the largest skull window. The teeth were unicuspid and either forward standing, long and narrow or square to the jaws sitting and shorter. The tip of the jaw may be toothless and was eventually provided with a horny sheath at the toothless species.

Like all original pterosaurs had the Rhamphorhynchidae relatively short metacarpals. The sacrum ( sacrum ) consisted of three or four sacral vertebrae fused together. In the basin of the ischium ( ischium ) and the pubic bone ( pubis ) are fused to Ischiopubisplatte, for small species but separated by an intercondylar notch.

The end of the long tail was provided at Rhamphorhynchus with a vertical, rhombic or triangular tail sail. In sordes only a thickening of the tail end reveals, in all other Rhamphorhynchidae no tail sail is demonstrated.

Subfamilies and genera

• Rhamphorhynchinae Angustinaripterus
• Bellubrunnus
• Dorygnathus
• Nesodactylus
• Rhamphocephalus
• Rhamphorhynchus

• Cacibupteryx
• Harpactognathus
• Pterorhynchus
• Scaphognathus
• Sordes

Swell

• David M. Unwin: The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time. PI Press, New York, 2006, ISBN 0 - 13-146308 -X
• Peter Wellhofer: pterosaurs. A. Ziemsen Verlag, Wittenberg, 1980, ISSN 0138-1423