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They also reject the idea of water as responsible for randomly arranging the bodies in a "death pose", as different parts of the body and the limbs can be in different directions, which they found unlikely to be the result of moving water. [3] They also did not find the drying out of ligaments as a potential cause convincing.
Pterodactylus (from Ancient Greek: πτεροδάκτυλος, romanized: pterodáktylos ' winged finger ' [2]) is a genus of extinct pterosaurs.It is thought to contain only a single species, Pterodactylus antiquus, which was the first pterosaur to be named and identified as a flying reptile and one of the first prehistoric reptiles to ever be discovered.
Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs (Aves, i.e. birds) has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event.
The researchers said that of all the cosmic bodies they have studied that struck Earth in the last 500 million years, only the one that exterminated the dinosaurs was a water-rich asteroid.
Pterodactyloids were the last surviving pterosaurs when the order became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, together with the non-avian dinosaurs and most marine reptiles. "Pterodactyl" is also a common term for pterodactyloid pterosaurs, though it can also be used to refer to Pterodactylus specifically.
Theropod dinosaur Irritator shown feeding on a pterosaur Pterosaurs are known to have been eaten by theropods . In the 1 July 2004 edition of Nature , paleontologist Éric Buffetaut discusses an Early Cretaceous fossil of three cervical vertebrae of a pterosaur with the broken tooth of a spinosaur , most likely Irritator , embedded in it.
Ornithocheiromorpha (from Ancient Greek, meaning "bird hand form") is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. Fossil remains of this group date back from the Early to Late Cretaceous periods (Valanginian to Turonian stages), around 140 to 92.5 million years ago.
Pterodaustro has about a thousand bristle-like modified teeth in its lower jaws that might have been used to strain crustaceans, plankton, algae, and other small creatures from the water. [6] These teeth stand for the most part not in separate alveoli but in two long grooves parallel to the edges of the jaw. They have a length of 3 centimeters ...