A rudder on its tail
The stiff tail ended in a diamond-shaped flap of skin, which changed shape as the animal grew up.
In the air · Flying reptiles
Rhamphorhynchus
Beak snout · RAM-foe-RINK-us
A small flying reptile with a long tail ending in a diamond-shaped vane, and jaws of forward-pointing teeth.
- Size
- Wingspan up to 1.8m
- Lived
- About 150 million years ago
- Found in
- Bavaria, Germany; also England
Flaps after you, tail streaming. 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 rhamphorhynchus
A fish trap
Its long teeth pointed forwards and outwards, and meshed together to hold slippery fish.
Caught by a fish
One fossil shows a Rhamphorhynchus with its wing in the jaws of a large fish. Both died.
Wings in fine detail
Fossils from Solnhofen show the wing membrane and its stiffening fibres.
Perhaps a night flier
The bones around its eyes suggest it may have been active at night.
Flying from the start
Even the youngest had fully formed wings, so they could probably fly soon after hatching.
The real thing
Photos of the rhamphorhynchus
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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
Fish and squid.
How we know
More than a hundred skeletons are known, of all ages.
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