Pterosaurs take to the air
Pterosaurs, cousins of the dinosaurs, become the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, appearing in the fossil record about 215 million years ago in the Late Triassic.
The story
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, appearing in the fossil record about 215 million years ago in the Late Triassic. They were not dinosaurs but close cousins, part of the same larger group of reptiles. Early forms such as Eudimorphodon, from Italy, were small, with long tails and sharp teeth. Their wing was a membrane of skin and muscle stretched from the body to a hugely elongated fourth finger, and many were covered with a fuzz of hair-like filaments.
Pterosaurs came out of the aftermath of the Great Dying, when reptile lineages diversified, and they lived alongside dinosaurs for nearly 150 million years. Powered flight evolved independently in insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats. Pterosaurs grew to extraordinary sizes. Quetzalcoatlus of the Late Cretaceous had a wingspan of about 10 to 11 meters, among the largest flying animals ever. Researchers think large pterosaurs launched by pushing off with their powerful forelimbs. They disappeared in the mass extinction 66 million years ago.
Why it mattered
- Vertebrates began exploiting the air, a step later repeated by birds and bats.
- Pterosaurs show that flight can evolve more than once, with different wing designs.
- Their fossils, found from the 1780s in the limestone of Bavaria, helped establish the idea that ancient reptiles were very different from living ones.
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