Pterosaurs Could Somehow Fly Right After Hatching, New Fossils Suggest

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Jun 13, 2019, 8:45pm

New analysis of recent fossil finds suggest that pterosaurs could fly very soon after they hatched, unlike today’s birds or bats.

The pterosaurs were a group of flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs and included the famous pterodactyls. Humans have been aware of these creatures through fossils for at least three centuries, but researchers have only in the past 15 years started uncovering evidence of their development from eggs into adults.

These finds led to a debate over whether pterosaur wings and bones developed under the care of parents before flight, like today’s flying animals, or whether pterosaurs could fly right after hatching. A new analysis provides evidence that the reptiles developed all of their flight abilities before hatching.

“One mistake we’ve made in the past is to try and interpret pterosaurs in the context of birds and bats,” David Unwin, the study’s first author and paleobiologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom told Gizmodo. “We’ve learned the hard way that doesn’t always work.”

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It's Official: Those Flying Reptiles Called Pterosaurs Were Covered in Fluffy Feathers

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | December 17, 2018 02:22pm ET

There's no doubt anymore: Pterosaurs — the flying reptiles that zipped through the skies during the dinosaur age — sported feathers, a finding that pushes the origin of these fluffy structures back 70 million years.

An analysis of two well-preserved pterosaur specimens found in China revealed that these beasts had four completely different feather types, researchers said in a study published online today (Dec. 17) in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolultion.

"The pterosaurs had four types of feather-like structures: simple filaments ('hairs'), bundles of filaments, filaments with a tuft halfway down and down feathers," study lead researcher Baoyu Jiang, a professor of paleontology in the School of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Nanjing University in China, told Live Science in an email. [Photos of Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs]

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Truck- and Plane-Size Pterosaurs Once Flew Over Dinosaurs

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | August 29, 2017 12:47pm ET

CALGARY, Alberta —  The fossilized remains of two pterosaurs — winged reptiles that flew sky high during the dinosaur age — suggest that the soaring truck- and plane-size beasts were closely related to the gigantic Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest pterosaur on record, new research finds.

Both pterosaurs date back to the Maastrichtian, a period that occurred between 72 million and 66 million years ago. It ended when a 6-mile-wide (10 kilometers) asteroid slammed into Earth, ending the reign of the nonavian dinosaurs and countless reptiles, including the pterosaurs.

The newly unearthed pterosaurs were found in Jordan in 2005 and 2008, and both belong to a family of pterosaurs called Azhdarchids, which includes the famous Q. northropi — a pterosaur the size of an airplane, with an almost-40-foot (12 meters) wingspan. [Photos of Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs]

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A Deep Dive Into the Skeleton of the Oldest-Known Modern Bird

A fossil found in China may offer new clues about avian evolution

By Elizabeth Quill

Smithsonian Magazine 

July 2015

About 130 million years ago, when pterosaurs still dominated the skies, the bird whose fossil remains are pictured here waded along a lakeshore in northeast China. To paleontologists this ten-inch-tall specimen, recently studied by Min Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues, is a giant step forward because it represents the oldest example ever discovered of a modern-looking bird. The bird had fanned tail feathers, fused clavicles (creating a wishbone) and an alula, a wing feature that improves maneuverability during flight. To be sure, it’s not the oldest bird; that distinction still belongs to Archaeopteryx, which dates to 150 million years ago and is celebrated for showing that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Still, Archaeopteryx itself led to an evolutionary dead end, with no descendants alive today. The new species, Archaeornithura meemannae, belonged to the group that gave rise to modern birds, and pushes back their earliest known appearance by five million years.

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Tricky take-off kept pterodactyls grounded

A new study, which teamed cutting-edge engineering techniques with paleontology, has found that take-off capacity may have determined body size limits in extinct flying reptiles. The research simulated pterodactyl flight using computer modeling, and will be presented at the upcoming Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Berlin. Findings suggest that a pterodactyl with a wingspan of 12m or more would simply not be able to get off the ground.

Pterosaurs (commonly known as pterodactyls) were truly giants of the sky. With wingspans of up to 10m, the largest species may have weighed as much as a quarter of a ton. They would have dwarfed the largest known bird at just one third this size. How could such behemoths stay aloft? What prevented them from becoming even bigger?

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