What’s this beast? This is no bird. This is a dinosaur. Well, birds are technically dinosaurs. But there is still a twist here, because Pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs either. But we can learn a little something about birds, evolution and where they came from by looking at this ridiculous winged lizard, this bird wannabe.
It may come as a surprise that birds and Pterodactyls aren’t related. Afterall, all birds are dinosaurs, they had to evolve to fly at some point, so it makes sense to look at a winged reptile from the Jurassic as a potential ancestor. But here’s where we learn about dinosaurs, birds and taxonomy.
Properly speaking there are only two linages of beasts that are “dinosaurs”. The first are the ornithischian, or bird-hipped dinosaurs. These include things like Stegosaurus and Triceratops. The second are the Saurischia, or lizard-hipped dinosaurs. They include T-rex, long necked sauropods and birds. That’s right birds evolved from Lizard-hipped dinosaurs, not bird-hipped dinosaurs, because nothing ever makes sense.
But what about the Pterodactyls? Well, they come from a branch that broke off from the main dinosaurs millions of years earlier, and they belong to their own group of animals called Pterosaurs, which lived quite successfully until an asteroid slammed into the earth. To find the true ancestor of the birds during the Jurassic we would have to look to Archaeopyeryx, which was a little feathered lizard doing its own thing.
It is supposed Pterosaurs were the first animals to evolve powered flight. Their wings are freaky, though, and instead of feathers they evolved an elongated fourth finger, which a flap of skin extended off and attached to their feet.
But were Pterodactyls the terrors of the skies? No they were not. They were actually only about the size of a chicken. Although many other Pterosaurs were. The Pteranodon, for example had a wingspan of over 6 metres and was a superb predator, eating mainly fish.
Now, you may be wondering why a non-bird, non-dinosaur featured today? Well a person generous enough to support bird of the week on patreon thought they’d play a prank on me and request something ridiculous. Do you also want the opportunity to troll your humble purveyor of bird facts? Then when not swing on by patreon and see if you’d like to join the flock.
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