paleontologist.

During the Mesozoic Era, above the heads of dinosaurs, there were lots of different kinds of birds.

But there were also flying reptiles that were not birds and not dinosaurs.

We call them pterosaurs.

And pterosaurs came in all shapes and sizes.

Some of them were huge, like Quetzalcoatlus with a wingspan about 50 feet wide, the size of a small aircraft.

And some were really small, like Nemicolopterus, only about 10 inches tall, that were a lot like small birds, say ravens, little predators.

And these larger pterosaurs were kind of like the albatrosses we see flying across oceans.

These animals were phenomenal.

They had hollow bones, so they were light and they could fly easily, and many of them were huge.

Some, like Pteranodon, had big crests on their heads.

And we all know Pteranodon from the Pteranodon family.

All of the Pteranodons fall into this group called pterosaurs.

And they lived in the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, and the very last pterosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

So the next time you look up into the sky and see a small airplane flying overhead, imagine instead that that is a giant flying reptile, a pterosaur, cruising above you.

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