flying-reptiles

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, doing so roughly 50 million years before birds and 80 million years before bats. At their largest — Quetzalcoatlus northropi, with a wingspan matching a small aircraft — they were the heaviest flying animals in Earth's history. Yet despite sharing the Mesozoic with dinosaurs and appearing in every dinosaur documentary, pterosaurs were not dinosaurs. They were something altogether different.