Sclerodontium Schwägr.

The description of the type species applies to the genus as a whole.

Sclerodontium was reviewed by Crum (1986), who considered it to fit "comfortably into the Dicranaceae owing to asymmetrically forked peristome teeth marked by vertical pit-striation and long, narrow leaves with colourful groups of differentiated alar cells. A most interesting feature, anomalous in the Dicranaceae, is the pleurocarpous habit of growth and the abundance of branches in an arrangement one associates with a Grimmia or a Rhacomitrium". The genus was retained in the Dicranaceae by Goffinet et al. (2009).

Crum (1986) considered the genus to consist of two species, one of which he treated as two regional subspecies. The genus is predominantly Australasian, with outliers in southern Brazil and Indonesia. The best known and most widely distributed taxon is the Australasian type S. pallidum (Hook.) Schwägr. subsp. pallidum. The second species, S. clavinerve (Müll.Hal.) H.A.Crum, allegedly differs from S. pallidum by having ultimate branches that are more curved, leaves that are more secund when dry, and the presence of conspicuous, dark green deciduous leaf tips that serve as asexual gemmae. Crum (1986) found no sporophytes in S. clavinerve, which he records from eastern Australia and southern Brazil.