pterosaur
any flying reptile of the extinct order Pterosauria, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, having the outside digit of the forelimb greatly elongated and supporting a wing membrane.
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Origin of pterosaur
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Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use pterosaur in a sentence
The pterosaur specimen, however, was definitely not perfect.
Smugglers almost made off with a near-complete fossil of a bizarre flying reptile | Hannah Seo | August 26, 2021 | Popular-ScienceIn 2013, a police raid at Santos Harbor in Brazil recovered about 30,000 smuggled fossils, including the most intact specimen of a type of big-headed pterosaur ever found.
This big-headed pterosaur may have preferred walking over flying | Nikk Ogasa | August 25, 2021 | Science News“Baby pterosaurs almost certainly didn’t glide,” they flew, says Kevin Padian, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not part of the new study.
Pterosaurs may have been able to fly as soon as they hatched | Carolyn Gramling | July 22, 2021 | Science NewsA new analysis of the fossilized wing bones of embryonic, newly hatched and adult pterosaurs suggests the baby creatures were strong and nimble fliers from the start, researchers report July 22 in Scientific Reports.
Pterosaurs may have been able to fly as soon as they hatched | Carolyn Gramling | July 22, 2021 | Science NewsAdult pterosaurs, less able to maneuver due to their size, may have then switched to more open habitats.
Pterosaurs may have been able to fly as soon as they hatched | Carolyn Gramling | July 22, 2021 | Science News
The last, and perhaps the most interesting, of the doomed monsters of the Mesozoic was the pterosaur, or "flying reptile."
The Story of Evolution | Joseph McCabe
British Dictionary definitions for pterosaur
/ (ˈtɛrəˌsɔː) /
any extinct flying reptile of the order Pterosauria, of Jurassic and Cretaceous times: included the pterodactyls: Compare dinosaur, plesiosaur
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for pterosaur
[ tĕr′ə-sôr′ ]
Any of various extinct flying reptiles of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods with wings consisting of a flap of skin supported by an elongated fourth digit on each forelimb (rather than an elongated second digit as in birds). Some pterosaurs were unique among reptiles in being covered with hair. Pterosaurs had wingspans ranging from less than 0.3 m (1 ft) to close to 15.2 m (50 ft).
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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