Page "Pterosaur" Paragraph 52

Two researchers, Chris Bennett ( 1996 ) and David Peters ( 2000 ), have found pterosaurs to be prolacertiformes or closely related to them.

Bennett only recovered pterosaurs as close relatives of the prolacertiformes after removing characteristics of the hind limb from his analysis, in an attempt to test the idea that these characters are the result of convergent evolution between pterosaurs and dinosaurs.

However, subsequent analysis by Dave Hone and Michael Benton ( 2007 ) could not reproduce this result.

Hone and Benton found pterosaurs to be closely related to dinosaurs even without hind limb characters.

They also criticized previous studies by David Peters, raising " serious questions " about the methods he used to recover pterosaurs among the prolacertiformes.

Hone and Benton concluded that although more primitive pterosauromorphs are needed to clarify their relationships, pterosaurs are best considered archosaurs, and specifically ornithodirans, given current evidence.

In Hone and Benton's analysis, pterosaurs are either the sister group of Scleromochlus or fall between it and Lagosuchus on the ornithodiran family tree.

Sterling Nesbitt ( 2011 ) found strong support for a clade composed of Scleromochlus and pterosaurs.