The first pterosaur ever found
It was described in 1784. At first nobody knew what it was: some thought it swam with its arms.
In the air · Flying reptiles
Pterodactyl
Its real name is Pterodactylus · Winged finger · TEH-roe-DAK-til-us
A small flying reptile with a long, narrow beak full of small teeth, a short tail and a low crest.
- Size
- Wingspan about 1m
- Lived
- About 150 million years ago
- Found in
- Bavaria, Germany
Flits after you. Move your pointer and see.
To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the pterodactyl
The original pterodactyl
Its proper name is Pterodactylus. People shortened it to pterodactyl, and then used that word for every flying reptile. This is the real one.
Hardly any tail
Unlike earlier pterosaurs it had only a stub of a tail.
A soft crest
It had a low crest of skin on its head, which shows only in the best fossils.
The size of a crow
Many of the fossils are of youngsters with wingspans of only 20 or 30 centimetres.
A daytime flier
The bones around its eyes suggest it was active by day.
The real thing
Photos of the pterodactyl
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Small fish and other small animals, probed for in shallow water.
How we know
It comes from the same German limestone as Archaeopteryx.
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