the.com/pterosaur
Dinosaurs' flying cousins who got wings first and let birds steal the spotlight.
means A flying reptile from the age of dinosaurs, with wings formed from skin stretched along one massively elongated finger.
from From Greek pteron ("wing") plus sauros ("lizard") — the same sauros that gives us "dinosaur." Coined in the early 19th century once naturalists realized these fossil skeletons belonged to reptiles that actually flew, not swam or walked. The elongated fourth finger supporting the wing membrane later inspired the related term pterodactyl, "wing finger," from pteron plus daktylos.
- not dinosaurs
- separate reptile lineage, just distant cousins
- wing material
- skin membrane stretched to one giant finger
- size range
- sparrow-sized to small-plane-sized, Quetzalcoatlus had 36-foot wingspan
- extinction timing
- died out alongside dinosaurs, 66 million years ago