A crest like a sail
A bony prong at the front and one at the back held up a sheet of skin, taller than the head was long.
In the air · Flying reptiles
Tapejara
The old being · TAP-eh-JAR-ah
A flying reptile with a short, down-turned toothless beak and an enormous sail-like crest on its head.
- Size
- Wingspan about 3.5m
- Lived
- About 112 million years ago
- Found in
- North-east Brazil
Sails 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 tapejara
For showing off
The crest was almost certainly brightly coloured, for display.
A parrot's beak
Its short, toothless beak may have been for eating fruit and seeds.
A name from Brazil
The name comes from the Tupi people's language.
Fossils in the round
The Brazilian fossils are not squashed flat, so the full shape of the skull is known.
A rudder?
Some think the crest helped it steer. From above, as drawn here, you see it edge-on.
The real thing
Photos of the tapejara
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
Probably fruit and seeds, and perhaps small animals.
How we know
It comes from limestone in Brazil that preserves soft parts such as the crest.
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