Faxinalipterus is a genus of ornithodiran archosaur, originally described as a pterosaur, from the Late Triassic Caturrita Formation of southern Brazil. A study from 2022 reinterpreted the fossil remains and instead suggests them to belong to a member of the Lagerpetidae, a more basal clade of pterosauromorph. Description The type species, Faxinalipterus minima was named and described in 2010 by José Fernando Bonaparte, Marina Bento Soares and César Leandro Schultz. The generic name is derived from Faxinal do Soturno and a Latinised Greek pteron, "wing". The specific name, from Latin minima, means "smallest". The name was later amended and changed to minimus in accordance with the rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). Fossils of the species were found in 2002 and 2005 at a site 1.5 kilometres northeast of Faxinal do Soturno, Rio Grande do Sul, from the Caturrita Formation dating from the Carnian-Norian, 220–215 million years old. The holotype, UFRGS PV0927T, is part of the collection of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and consists of several, partially fragmentary, limb elements, perhaps of a single individual. These do not include bones from the hand. An upper jaw fragment, a left maxilla with three teeth, has been referred to the species, but later determined to represent an animal distinct from Faxinalipterus, which was named Maehary. Faxinalipterus is a rather small animal, with an estimated total humerus length of eighteen millimetres. The size has been compared to that of a sparrow. The hind limbs, much better conserved than the front limbs, are relatively long. Taxonomy The describers assigned Faxinalipterus to the Pterosauria, based on its long hollow limbs and saddle-shaped upper joint of the relatively short and robust humerus, suitable to perform a wing stroke. They saw it as perhaps the oldest pterosaur known, as it possibly predates European finds from the Norian. they see that the possible age difference between pterosaurs cannot be large as an indication of rapid evolution in early pterosaurs. Because the Caturrita Formation consists of terrestrial sandstones, that evolution would have had its origins in a terrestrial, not coastal, habitat. They also concluded Faxinalipterus is the most basal known pterosaur, basal features including a lack of fusion between tibia and fibula, a thin radius and a coracoid that has not fused to the scapula. However, Alexander Kellner has suggested Faxinalipterus might be not be a pterosaur but a basal member of