Kingdom Animalia | Phylum Chordata | |
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Clade †Confuciusornithiformes Family †Confuciusornithidae
Hou et al., 1995 | ||
Confuciusornithidae is a family of primitive birds from the early Cretaceous Period of China. It consists of four genera. About half of all the confuciusornithid specimens, including representatives of all species, that have preserved feathers possess a pair of distinctive ribbon-like tail feathers, and possessed both shafted and non-shafted (downy) feathers.
Taxonomy
The family Confuciusornithidae was first named by Hou et al. in 1995 to contain the type genus, Confuciusornis, and assigned to the order Confuciusornithiformes within class Aves. The group was given a phylogenetic definition by Chiappe, in 1999, who defined a node-based clade Confuciusornithidae to include only Changchengornis and Confuciusornis. Jinzhouornis was added to the Confuciusornithidae by Hou, Zhou, and Zhang in 2002, and in 2008, Zhang, Zhou and Benton assigned the newly described genus Eoconfuciusornis to the family.
Most confuciusornithids are known from the upper Jehol group, the Yixian Formation and Jiufotang Formation, dating from 125 to 120 million years ago. E. zhengi, however, predated the other confuciusornithids by 6 million years, dating to 131 Ma ago.