Germanodactylus ("German finger") is a genus of germanodactylid pterodactyloid pterosaur from Upper Jurassic-age rocks of Germany, including the Solnhofen Limestone.

It was originally described by Plieninger in 1901 as a specimen of Pterodactylus kochi,[1] and was given its current specific name by Carl Wiman in 1925, meaning "crested" in Latin.

[4] Peter Wellnhofer added it to Germanodactylus in 1970,[5] although Maisch and his coauthors have suggested that it deserves its own genus, "Daitingopterus".

David M. Unwin has also referred miscellaneous limb bones and vertebrae from the somewhat older Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, England to the genus; these finds at the time marked the earliest appearance of short-tailed pterosaurs in the fossil record.

Darwinopterus and Cuspicephalus also possess headcrests made of "fibrous" bone, demonstrating that the character is a homology,[15] and not a homoplasy.

[9] David M. Unwin, on the other hand, preferred to consider it a basal dsungaripteroid,[10][16] a group that evolved into dedicated shellfish-eaters.

[10] Vidovic and Martill not only considered the contents of Germanodactylus to be paraphyletic, but they found the two species to be entirely distinct in their cladistic analysis.

Vidovic and Martill did not initially propose a new name for "G. rhamphastinus", but they suggested that it might represent an adult Diopecephalus, if that genus proves to be valid.