Cowley, 1934 nom. subst. pro Petalia HAGEN in SELYS, 1854, nec Petalia XXX (for further information see Carle and Louton, 1994 and Bechly, 1996). Originally described as Petalia by Selys 1854, the genus was later redescribed by Cowley as Neopetalia. Neopetaliidae was erected by Tillyard and Fraser, in 1940. The family became monogeneric after Carle and Louton (1994), who created the Austropetaliidae to place the remaining taxa with spotted wings, which are now considered to be closely related to other aeshnoid taxa. Neopetalia was placed with what is now considered Zoranea in the legion Cordulegaster by Selys in 854, but subsequent additions of several aeshnoid taxa to the family, such as Phyllopetalia, which also possess wing spots, led to decades of invalid taxonomic assumptions (Selys, 1858; 1869; 1878; Fraser 1929; 1957; 1960; Tillyard and Fraser, 1940; Schmidt, 1941; Davies and Tobin, 1985). Recent works have reclassified the taxon (Carle and Louton, 1994; Garrison et al., 2006) and phylogenetic analyses support its new placement (Misof et al., 2001; Misof et al., 2002; Misof et al., 2003; Ware et al., 2007; Letsch, 2007; Ware et al., 2008, Fleck et al., 2008). Neopetalia is currently considered to be sister to the non-cordulegastrid Libelluloidea.