Avemetatarsalia

Avemetatarsalians Temporal range: Middle Triassic–Present, 249 mya to present (possible Early Triassic record)
Clockwise from top-left: Tupuxuara leonardi (a pterosaur), Alamosaurus sanjuanensis, (a sauropod), Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus (an ornithopod), Daspletosaurus torosus (a tyrannosaur), Pentaceratops sternbergii (a ceratopsian), and Grus grus (a living avian).
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Sauropsida
Clade:	Archosauria
Clade:	Avemetatarsalia Benton, 1999
Subgroups
†Aphanosauria Ornithodira Gauthier, 1986 †Pterosauromorpha †Scleromochlus? (placement uncertain) †Pterosauria Dinosauromorpha †Lagerpetidae †Lagosuchus Dinosauriformes †Marasuchus †Nyasasaurus †Saltopus †Silesauridae Dinosauria
Synonyms
Ornithosuchia Huene, 1908 Pan-Aves Gauthier, 2001

Avemetatarsalia (meaning "bird toes") is a clade name established in 1999 for all crown group archosaurs that are closer to birds than to crocodiles.^[1] An alternate name is Panaves, or "all birds", meaning all animals, living or extinct, which are more closely related to birds than to crocodiles.

Members of this group are basically the dinosaurs (including birds), the pterosaurs, and some earlier animals which are a bit difficult to place. They are one wing of the Archosaurs, the other being the Crurotarsi.

1. ↑ Benton, M.J. (1999). "Scleromochlus taylori and the origin of dinosaurs and pterosaurs". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 354 (1388): 1423–1446. doi:10.1098/rstb.1999.0489. PMC 1692658.