Pterosaurs!: Evolution of Flight in Reptiles

before you watch this video if you haven't already check out the first part of this project air lizards by either going on my channel or clicking on the little white info card in the top right to watch that video or don't well here they are pterosaurs as explained in the last video they were the first of the vertebrates to truly fly no more of that gliding junk for this video we're looking at some real flyers today pterosaurs are also not merely the first but probably the most outstanding group of flying animals in their multi-million run they became the biggest and weirdest creatures to ever take to the skies yet as usual we have to start out with the small beginnings so let's go to where we ended off with the little prion dactylus the first pterosaurs like preondactylus were able to fly with a simple but bizarre characteristic their fourth finger is shockingly elongated in order to provide a support for the potatium remember that fun vocab word their potatium is actually not just simple skin but a complex interweaving of fibers the wing is also supported by a special bone on their arm completely unique to pterosaurs known as the terroid bone this membrane connects from the wingtips down to the ankles we think and even connects in between the legs we think as you might see by my hesitation we don't know everything about the potatium of the creatures and exactly how their wings looked but the current ideas are backed up by good evidence and hold merit anyways with these finger wings the earliest pterosaurs and all of their ancestors would take to the skies these earliest pterosaurs usually refer to as basal pterosaurs or informally as ram pharyncoids all had a similar body plan they held a lizard-like quadrupedal stance with claws built for climbing their wings compared to later pterosaurs were small and most had a long tail ending with a tail vein most notably they were all rather small feeding on insects small vertebrates and fish these hemphorencoids were the ones who ruled the skies from the late triassic period all the way to the end of the jurassic period and had many notable genres within their ranks the ram farenko's namesake ramforinkus lacked dental insurance and therefore its skull was filled with many needle-like teeth angled forward this along with their geography and coprolite shows these creatures were fish eaters although how these tiny creatures caught fish has been speculated on for a while a theory stated that ramfarinkas would skim their snaps against the water to catch fish near to the surface similar to modern skimming birds but they are merely not built for this instead it is believed ramparankis would swim on top of the water and hunt fish similar to modern seabirds another well-known ramparankoed was dimorphidon these dog-sized pterosaurs were actually rather poor flyers due to their short wings and robust skeleton they would instead run across the forest floor to catch insects or lizards and only clumsily fly when necessary similar to quails some of the weirder pterosaurs during this time were the egg neurognathets these differed from other basal pterosaurs by lacking a long tail and having a stubby skull which makes them look more like muppet than loving animal they are named after the eggneregnathus which was possibly the smallest pterosaur ever only growing a few inches in length a neurognathus and its relatives are believed to be insectivores darting through the jungle catching insects not much smaller than themselves there was also a second group of pterosaurs evolving in the mid-jurassic the pterodactyloids these mainly differentiated themselves from the rhamphronicoids by lacking tails and having longer hand bones as well as longer less toothy peaks pterodactyly remained pretty outnumbered during the jurassic with only a few known jurassic pterodactyloids compared to the numerous ram pharyncoids so besides those outliers you might have noticed that the basal pterosaurs are not the most spectacular creatures sorry guys but it's true in the many millions of years they were around most pterosaurs did not get much larger than a cat and nearly all of them subsisted on the same diet of small animals and fish the reason for this lack of diversity among basal pterosaurs is because after they got wings the pterosaurs just became lazy they had no incentive to evolve any further past little bug eaters so therefore stayed like that the pterosaurs would need something to challenge them so they could be pushed to their extremes and that something were birds birds began popping up in the early cretaceous and they too were small flying animals preying on insects finally pterosaurs had some competition and began evolving into different shapes gone were the long-tailed and toothy rempharancoids replaced by pterodactyloids why this replacement happened is because pterodactyloids with their particular wing structure and complex air sacs could soar over a vast distance something both birds and basal pterosaurs could not do so as the dreams of ramparankoids were being crushed by the birds pterodactyloids would find new niches and grow continually larger and more spectacular throughout the cretaceous but now before we can go into the deep end of pterosaurs we first must address why pterosaurs could get so big firstly they were hollow like the most hollow animals ever pterosaurs had very light and empty bones which lowered their weight down tremendously and as said before pterosaurs had many air sacs around their bodies with a very efficient respiratory system to decrease the amount of energy used while flying but one of the most interesting traits that benefited their size was how they got themselves in the air by a catapult no not like that exactly instead the pterosaur's muscular forearms were probably strong enough too along with the help of the back legs sling the entire creature's body into the air where it would then begin flight this quadrupedal launch is much more efficient than a bird's and goes to show the ingenuity of pterosaurs so with all of those advantages pterosaurs could get bigger than any other flying animal so let's finally see some of those giants that i've been alluding to the first of the giant pterosaurs were members of the ornithochiromorpha family which appeared during the early cretaceous these pterosaurs did not grow too small a tiny is still having a wingspan of three meters with the largest genre tropeagnathus having a wingspan over eight meters long their long snaps filled with numerous sharp teeth points to these creatures being piskivores soaring over the oceans and dipping their snaps in the water to catch fish one trait you may have noticed were these two crests that some ornithocyromorphs possessed on both their upper and lower jaws these crests don't seem to have any practical purpose but boy did pterosaurs love them another group the zhang garipterade were some of the silliest looking of all the pterosaurs with giant heads and a permanent smile these creatures also had a crest located on the top of their head as well as sets of crushing teeth at the back of their skull which they used to crush shellfish and mollusks their primary food source the tapajarade family took breast to a whole new extreme essentially carrying billboards on top of their heads these pterosaurs also completely ditch the teeth thing in favor of a full-on beak which they use to not hunt fish but fruits and seeds already with these three early cretaceous lineages you can see a staggering amount of terrorists with diversity both in terms of appearance and diet more odd-faced pterosaurs with unique eating strategies popped up in the early cretaceous little leptostomia had a long and narrow beak which it would have used to pick worms out of the ground similar to modern kiwis among pterosaurs this type of feeding is completely unique to leptostomia another one-of-a-kind pterosaur was terradostro and its close relatives which had multiple sets of long bristles in its bottom jaw these could be used to filter feed like a baleen whale in order to eat small invertebrates in the water as the cretaceous period progressed pterosaurs would continue to reach larger sizes yet there is a common misconception that by the late cretaceous there were only big pterosaurs which isn't true new discoveries have proven that there were cat-sized pterosaurs even at the end of the cretaceous one pterosaur named nicktosaurus was on the smaller end at a two meter wingspan though it made up for this with a truly gigantic crest which was three times the length of its skull another fantastically crested but this time larger pterosaur was tupuhuara which carried a massive elaborate skull on a 5 meter wingspan another pattern you might have noticed is all of these later pterosaurs completely lack teeth this trend is continued further the famous pteranodon meaning toothless wing trinidan was also very sexually dimorphic with male and female once thought to be separate species female pteranodons have a small lump-like crest on their head and are dramatically smaller than the males meanwhile the males have their iconic skull crests and possess a six meter wingspan pteranodon lived very similar to a massive albatross spending most of its time soaring over the seas and subsisting on a diet of fish but no pterosaur represented the potential of these creatures more than the giant as targets as dark kids are most characterized for their weird anatomy they are distinct for a gigantic stiff neck and head which ends in an incredibly long and toothless beak one part of their body plan you may have not noticed is their legs which are comparatively long for most pterosaurs their long legs allow these creatures to actually be pretty comfortable moving on the ground they probably spent a good amount of time on land because of this terrestrial lifestyle paleontologists now believe as dark kids would stalk and catch small animals using their great size and reach flying from one feeding area to another just like the wading birds of today this and their appearance has given them the perhaps overblown nickname of death storks which sounds like a great metal band as darkids were very successful creatures as well soaring over all parts of the globe including antarctica they also grew immense the largest ones like quetzalcoatlus could have a wingspan of 10 meters and could look a giraffe in the eye making them the largest flying animals ever hatzogopteryx is not far behind in terms of size however it was much stockier and heavily built this is because it was presumably the top predator of the small nile long gone hateg island which lacked any other large predators and was filled with small dwarf dinosaurs ripe for being preyed on by huge as targets another contender for the largest was the more obscure aaron borgiania who possibly had one of the longest necks of any terrestrial animal that wasn't a dinosaur aeroborgiania also originally had the way cooler and pronounceable name of titanopteryx meaning titan wing but this scientific name was already taken by what else but a fly thanks science regardless of who was the largest by the end of the cretaceous pterosaurs had become the masters of the skies but all good things come to an end with the extinction of the dinosaurs also came the death of the pterosaurs along with it it had long been hypothesized that these giant pterosaurs were the only ones left at the end of the cretaceous and simply grew too big to possibly adapt to their extinction unlike birds a great ironic narrative that unfortunately is not true as i explained earlier small pterosaurs were still around by the end but remember even in the beginning small pterosaurs were still many times larger than any backyard bird meaning even the smallest pterosaurs could not have survived an actual apocalypse like the kt extinction some also theorized birds survived due to their diet of seeds and other food sources which would have sustained an extinction event which was not the case for pterosaurs nevertheless pterosaurs bigger small completely disappeared a good 66 million years ago the age of the flying reptiles was over thanks for watching as you could see this is merely a brief overview of pterosaurs since there is so much to them if you are more interested in any of the animals please check out the specific articles in the description thanks to the many images and videos i used to make this especially to the artists who i will give a link to in the description of course thank you for watching to the end and see ya

Channel: The Budget Museum

Views: 146,918

Keywords: pterosaurs, quetzalcoatlus, pteranodon, paleontology, zoology, dinosaurs, flight, Azhdarchid, Arambourgiania, Rhamphorhynchoids, Dimorphodon, Rhamphorhynchus, Dsungaripterus, Ornithochierus, Trogeognathus, Archosaurs, Leptstomia, Pterodaustro, Anurognathus, Tapejaridae, Tapejara, Tupuxuara, Nyctosaurus, evolution, pterodactyl, Hatzegopteryx

Id: yEZkpFkLOVw

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020