E. leali was possibly fairly closely related to
Avisaurus, another genus of probably carnivorous enantiornithines, though its exact relationship is unclear. It was placed in a
family of its own,
Enantiornithidae. Other species from
Asia that were previously placed in this genus are now split off. The former
Enantiornis martini is now placed in
Incolornis, while the former
Enantiornis walkeri is now tentatively assigned to
Explorornis. The reason for this is that these species were described when the diversity of enantiornithines was underestimated. As no hindlimb elements are known from
Enantiornis, it might include one of the El Brete enantiornithines known only from leg bones, namely
Lectavis,
Soroavisaurus or
Yungavolucris. However, these apparently were all smaller than
Enantiornis. Hindlimb material tentatively assigned to
Martinavis and
Elbretornis seems somewhat and a lot too small, respectively, to represent
Enantiornis. The cladogram below is from Wang
et al., 2022: }} Key to letters:
b =
Boluochia c =
Cathayornis e =
Enantiophoenix f =
Houornis h =
Longipteryx i =
Parabohaiornis j =
Pterygornis l =
Vorona m =
Yuanjiawaornis n =
Yungavolucris == References ==