Wings Open, Feet on the Ground

About this drawing

Here's a fact that wins trivia nights: a pterodactyl on the ground, or anywhere else, was not a dinosaur. It shows up in every box of plastic dinos, sure, but it belonged to the pterosaurs, a separate family of flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs and were closely related to them.

The giveaway is in the bones. Dinosaurs stood with their legs straight under their bodies and had a particular hip design. Pterosaurs went a different way. Their wings were sheets of skin stretched from one incredibly long finger on each hand all the way back to the body.

Pterodactylus itself lived around 150 million years ago, in the Late Jurassic, and it was smaller than most people expect. Adults had a wingspan about like a large crow or gull. It stayed close to coastal lagoons, and it probably used its long, narrow jaws and fine teeth to grab fish and small prey.

On land it walked on all fours with its wings folded up, which we know from fossil trackways. Later relatives got much bigger, and the largest had wings as wide as a small airplane. Every last pterosaur vanished at the same time as the big dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago.

• pterosaurs
• flying reptiles
• prehistoric animals
• jurassic