| Palaeocursornis Temporal range: Early Cretaceous,
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Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Order: | †Pterosauria |
| Suborder: | †Pterodactyloidea |
| Clade: | †Neopterodactyloidea |
| Clade: | †Azhdarchiformes |
| Family: | †Azhdarchidae |
| Genus: | †Palaeocursornis Kessler & Jurcsák, 1986 |
| Species: | †P. corneti
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| Binomial name | |
| †Palaeocursornis corneti (Kessler & Jurcsák, 1984 [originally Limnornis])
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| Synonyms | |
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Palaeocursornis is a monotypic genus of pterosaurs. The only known species, P. corneti, was described in 1984 based on a single bone (MTCO-P 1637) interpreted as the distal part of a left femur, found in Early Cretaceous (Berriasian rocks (dating to around 143 mya) from a mine at Cornet near Oradea in northwestern Romania. It was initially assumed to be a flightless paleognathe bird, possibly a ratite, and later as a more primitive ornithuromorph or non-avialan theropod (Benton et al., 1997). However, re-evaluation of the specimen suggested that it was not a femur at all, but the upper arm bone (humerus) of a pterodactyloid pterosaur similar to Azhdarcho.[1]
The animal occurred on what at that time was an archipelago of volcanic and coral islands towards the east of the Piemont-Liguria Ocean. As the archipelago lay around 35°N latitude in a warmer, wetter climate than exists today, it was roughly similar to today's Caribbean or Indonesia. The habitat of Palaeocursornis was hilly, karstic terrain with numerous freshwater and/or brackish rivers, lakes and swamps.(Benton et al., 1997)
- ^ Federico L. Agnolin and David Varricchio (2012). "Systematic reinterpretation of Piksi barbarulna Varricchio, 2002 from the Two Medicine Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Western USA (Montana) as a pterosaur rather than a bird". Geodiversitas. 34 (4): 883–894. doi:10.5252/g2012n4a10. Archived from the original on 2013-01-07.