A fascinating look at Pterosaurs. Hard to imagine the strange anatomy of these reptiles (note: they are not dinosaurs) or the fact that they really could fly.
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrate creatures to evolve powered flight and conquer the air—long before birds took wing. They prevailed for more than 160 million years before vanishing along with the nonbird dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago. In that time, they evolved some of the most extreme anatomical adaptations of any animal, living or extinct. The smallest of these aerial predators was the size of a sparrow. The largest had a wingspan that rivaled that of an F-16 fighter jet. Many possessed heads larger than their bodies, making them, in essence, flying jaws of death. Pterosaurs patrolled every ocean and continent on Earth. No animal in the Mesozoic would have been safe from their gaze.
Unlike dinosaurs, which are survived today by birds, pterosaurs left behind no living descendants. As a result, all that paleontologists know about pterosaurs comes from the fossil record. And that record has been frustratingly fragmentary, leaving us with just a glimmer of their former glory and a host of questions about their bizarre anatomy and ill fate. Paleontologists have scratched their heads over these mysteries for decades. Now new fossil discoveries, combined with mathematical modeling methods in which anatomical structures are simplified just enough that equations of physical properties can be applied to get best estimates of strength, weight, speed, and so forth, are finally generating insights. And what scientists are finding is that pterosaurs were even more extraordinary than we ever imagined
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