Could we fly like the pterodactyls?

It is also annoyingly pertinent with a recent conference abstract on pterosaur take-offs being mangled in at least one media outlet to suggest that the largest pterosaurs ... Then we can move onto some more disparate lines of fossil evidence but which nevertheless support the idea these animals could fly. read more

The new research shows that pterosaurs weren’t capable of bat-like flight, which is the common conception. The authors of the new study don’t know what the flight pose of these animals looked like, but they’re fairly certain that pterosaurs, and possibly four-winged dinosaurs, didn’t fly with their hind limbs splayed wide apart. read more

Collectively then we've got good reason to think pterosaurs could fly, and indeed fly well. It may seem obvious given the presence of their wings, but to genuinely make a case that these really are wings, requires analogy, comparative anatomy, functional morphology and evidence from a diverse set of finds from the fossil record. read more