De klade werd in 2014 gedefinieerd door Rabi e.a. als de groep bestaande uit Sinemys lens en alle soorten nauwer verwant aan Sinemys dan aan Xinjiangchelys junggarensis, Macrobaena mongolica, of enige soort huidige schildpad.
Gaffney, E.S. and Ye, X. 1992. Dracochelys, a new cryptodiran turtle from the EarlyCretaceous of China. American Museum Novitates 3048: 1-13
Brinkman, D.B. and Peng, J.H. 1993a. Ordosemys leios n.gen. a new turtle from theearly Cretaceous of the Ordos Basin, Inner Mongolia. Canadian Journalof Earth Sciences 30: 2128-2138.
Brinkman, D.B., and J.H. Peng. 1993b. New material of Sinemys (Testudines, Sinemydidae) from the Early Cretaceous of China. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30: 2139–2152
Ren Hirayama, Donald B. Brinkman, and Igor G. Danilov, 2000, Distribution and Biogeography of Non-marine Cretaceous Turtles, Russian Journal of Herpetology Vol. 7, No. 3
Brinkman, D.B. 2001. New material of Dracochelys (Eucryptodira: Sinemydidae) fromthe Juggar Basin, Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. Canadian Journal of EarthSciences 38: 1645-1651
Danilov, I.G., and J.F. Parham. 2007. The type series of‘Sinemys' wuerhoensis, a problematic turtle from the Lower Cretaceous of China, includes at least three taxa. Palaeontology 50: 431–444.
Márton Rabi and Walter G. Joyce, 2012, New Insights into the Evolution of the Carotid Circulation System in Eucryptodiran Turtles, Symposium on Turtle Evolution, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Haiyan Tong, Donald Brinkman. (2013) A new species of Sinemys (Testudines: Cryptodira: Sinemydidae) from the Early Cretaceous of Inner Mongolia, China. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 93:3, 355-366