Palaeocursornis

Palaeocursornis is a dubious genus of avemetatarsalian, probably an azhdarchoid pterosaur.

==Discovery and naming == 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). In 2010, the holotype was considered too fragmentary and undiagnostic, so it was reclassified as a nomen dubium. Re-evaluation of the specimen suggested that it was not a femur at all, but the upper arm bone (humerus) of a pterodactyloid pterosaur with potential affinities to Azhdarchidae. In 2025, Thomas and McDavid suggested that Palaeocursornis is a dubious genus of tapejaroid.