| Yanornithiformes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist's reconstruction ofYanornis martini | |
Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | Saurischia |
| Clade: | Theropoda |
| Clade: | Avialae |
| Clade: | Ornithuromorpha |
| Clade: | †Yanornithiformes Zhou & Zhang, 2001 |
| Families | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Yanornithiformes is anorder ofornithuromorphdinosaurs from the earlyCretaceous Period ofChina. All known specimens come from theYixian Formation andJiufotang Formation, dating to the earlyAptian age, 124.6 to 120 million years ago.
The family Songlingornithidae was first named by Hou in 1997 to contain the type genus,Songlingornis.[1] Clarke et al. (2006) was first to find a close relationship betweenSonglingornis and the "yanornithids", which had been previously named to contain the similar speciesYanornis andYixianornis. At least one study has foundHollanda from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia to be a member of this group.[2] The family Yanornithidae (nowSonglingornithidae) had been placed in its own order containing no other families, named Yanornithiformes, in 2001.[3]
Beginning in 2012, multiple studies began to recover the songlingornithids in a clade with thehongshanornithids, a group of smaller, more specialized ornithuromorphs from the same time and place as some of the songlingornithids.[4][5] Other studies however continued to place the hongshanornithids just outside the yanornithiform clade.[2]
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