See text Campylopterodea Rohdendorf, 1962 Odonatoidea Lameere, 1936 The Odonatoptera are a superorder (sometimes treated as an order) of ancient winged insects, placed in the probably paraphyletic group Palaeoptera.

But various authors' analyses have yielded any one of three mutually exclusive phylogenies, or some variant thereof: The least problematic (in a taxonomic sense) view is that the Odonatoptera are the sister taxon of the Ephemeropteroidea (the mayfly lineage), and that the Palaeodictyopteroidea are either their sister taxon or a basal assemblage, all within a monophyletic Palaeoptera.

The third view places the mayfly lineage as sister taxon of the neopterans, with the Odonatoptera as most primitive winged insects; it has seen little support in recent decades however.

[3][4] Based on the work of Günter Bechly,[5] Nel et al. (2001)[6] and Petrulevičius & Gutierrez (2016).

[7] †Eugeropteridae †Kirchneralidae †Argentinalidae †Geropteridae †Eomeganisoptera (†Erasipteridae) †Meganisoptera (griffinflies) ?†Lapeyriidae †Campylopteridae †Protanisoptera †Triadotypomorpha †Triadophlebiomorpha †Protozygoptera (including Archizygoptera) †Tarsophlebiidae Zygoptera (damselfly) Epiophlebioptera Anisoptera (dragonfly) In some treatments, the Odonata are expanded to include all these taxa with the exception of the "Erasipteridae", Geroptera and Protodonata; this group is treated as an unranked clade Odonatoclada in the scheme used here.