American Museum of Natural History

Why are pterosaurs fossils so rare? Of all the pterosaurs that ever lived, only a minuscule fraction of these flying reptiles died under the right conditions to be “captured” as fossils. Even fewer are preserved intact. Pterosaur bones were thin and fragile, much like bird bones, and they often drifted apart, shattered, or became scrambled before they could be preserved. Pterosaur fossils are also easily damaged when extracted, transported, or prepared for study or display. Evidence is scarce, and each fossil offers just a hint of the wide array of pterosaurs that once populated the globe. Photo: AMNH/C. Chesek

What is a pterosaur? Neither birds nor bats, pterosaurs were reptiles, close cousins of dinosaurs who evolved on a separate branch of the reptile family tree. They were also the first animals after insects to evolve powered flight—not just leaping or gliding, but flapping their wings to generate lift and travel through the air. They evolved into dozens of species. Some were as large as an F-16 fighter jet, and others as small as a paper airplane.

Learn more about this ancient group of reptiles.

This weekend at the Museum: absolutely the last chance to see Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, Great White Shark, and Lonesome George!

Learn more on the Museum blog.

Hey everybody! The exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs closes in one month. Get as much prehistoric, winged-vertebrate goodness as you can before it's gone. Check out these pterrific links:

Tapejara wellnhoferi

Tapejara lived around 110 million years ago near a lagoon in what is now Brazil and had a wingspan around 6 feet. Most pterosaurs ate meat, but the relatively small Tapejara probably ate fruit and seeds. Why do researchers think this? Its beak is similar to fruit-eating birds like parrots and hornbills. The pointed beak turns down like modern birds, and the raised bump inside the beak may have helped crush seeds, cones and hard fruit coverings.

Meet many more species in Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, open now through January 4, 2015. 

It's a fishy #FossilFriday!

Vinctifer comptoni lived around 110 million years ago in the Romualdo Formation, in what is now Brazil. Although most of its close relatives are sharp-toothed predators, Vinctifer comptoni was a filter feeder. One clue it was not a hunter is the lack of teeth, and instead had enlarged gill rakers. These long, comblike bones were apparently used to filter small animals from the water, which were then swallowed.

Want to feel this fish? It is on display in the current exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, and the public is invited to touch it! 

Tupandactylus imperator

Fast Facts

When: It lived around 115 million years ago

Where: Near a freshwater lake in what is now Brazil

Wingspan: About 10 feet (3 m) 

Food: Fish

No other pterosaur had a bigger crest in relation to its body size than Tupandactylus imperator. Its spectacular crest swept from a bone on the front of its snout all the way over its head, and attached to a long rod jutting out from the back of its skull, like a sail. The extremely rare fossil specimen shows signs of the soft tissue between the bones of the crest—probably a substance similar to bird beaks.

See Tupandactylus and much more in Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. 

Hey everyone, the weekend is here! Flap your wings all the way to the Museum to learn about birds, migrations, and another flying phenom: pterosaurs!

Here are some cool links from the past week: 

Have a great weekend! 

The weekend is here, and we're taking off! Beat the heat in the Museum this weekend, and make sure to see Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, now open. 

Check out these links from the past week: 

Have a wonderful weekend!

To form a picture of a particular pterosaur species, paleontologists must often gather information from several fossils, borrow details from living animals with similar ways of life, and draw conclusions from related pterosaurs that are better known. 

Learn more in Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. 

Millions of years ago, pterosaurs roamed the skies, and now they rule the Museum! In the exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of the Dinosaurs visitors can see rare fossils, life-size models, and experience hands-on interactives that bring these ancient animals to life. Want to take Pterosaurs with you? Two iPad apps let you learn more at the push of a button. 

With the free Pterosaurs exhibition iPad app, adapted from the 2014 exhibition, get an in-depth look at these fascinating flying reptiles and the latest fossil discoveries that reveal how these animals walked, flew, ate, and more. 

Also make sure to download the companion app for Pterosaurs: The Card Game! This game and app explores amazing ancient reptiles and their food chains.

This weekend at the Museum: sharks, spiders, and pterosaurs! Oh, my! Whether you consider these creatures frightful or fantastic, you can learn all about them at the Museum right now. 

Here are our favorite posts from the past week:

Have a great weekend!

Today USASAURUS and GERMANODON face off in the World Cup! Which winged reptile will make it through to the next round? We can't wait to find out. Make your own pteam pterosaur now and share it with friends: Color A Pterosaur!

Learn more about Sinopterus and Tupandactylus, the pterosaurs featured here, in our new exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. 

From the Museum archives: "Dr. Barnum Brown with mounted Pteranodon, at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1938." Taken by Charles H. Coles, this image combines two of our favorite things: pterosaurs and Barnum Brown. 

Learn all about Pteranodon longiceps, perhaps one of the most recognizable pterosaurs, which lived about 85 million years ago, then watch a video about Barnum Brown, the man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex.

AMNH/315699

Found in 1873 near Solnhofen, Germany, this was the first fossil to show the complete wings of a pterosaur. Unearthed from a bed of limestone, this remarkably well-preserved skeleton belonged to Rhamphorhynchus muensteri, a long-tailed, dagger-toothed pterosaur from the Late Jurassic. The fine sediment fossilized not just the bones, but the tissues that formed the wing surface. The animal’s wings were partly folded, forming wrinkles that can still be seen.

See many more pterosaur fossils in the exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, now open at the Museum. 

We're kicking off the first weekend of summer with sharks, sleepovers, and more. Join us Sunday to learn about these misunderstood animals through hands-on activities and Q&A's with Museum scientists. 

Here are some posts you may have missed this week:

Have a great weekend!

GIF courtesy of NOAA Fisheries Video.

What is a pterosaur? It sounds like such a simple question. But the answer, as you learn in the new exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs, was by no means obvious when the first pterosaur skeleton was discovered in the mid-1700s, in the Solnhofen limestone quarry in Germany.

Perhaps, early observers theorized, that specimen’s long skinny arm-and-finger bones were for swimming? Or was it some kind of toothed, clawed, winged bird? Or even a mammal? Debates raged, even after 1801, when the great French anatomist Georges Cuvier analyzed drawings of the skeleton and determined the animal to be something new to science: a flying reptile that Cuvier later named ptero-dactyle (wing finger in Greek).

How closely related to dinosaurs are pterosaurs?