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When people first started to find pterosaurs and they were studied by early paleontologists,
they really didn't know what to make out of them.
Some people thought that they were aquatic animals that used their wings to propel themselves
through the water. It wasn't until the 1840s or so that people
really started to recognize them for what they were, a distinct group of flying reptiles
that are unrelated to birds or bats. They were the earliest creatures to have powered
flight. They had a life of about 175 million years,
which is a long, long, time, and they seem to have populated the entire planet.
Pterosaurs are such a diverse group of animals and so different from anything else that you
have today. Perhaps the most interesting aspect that might
surprise visitors is to see so much variation in body shapes, and in size of those really
fascinating animals called pterosaurs.
In the last decade, we've probably seen more new pterosaurs found around the world than
in the previous history of pterosaur studies in general.
The pterosaur fossils that have recently been found in Brazil and in China are a lot different
than pterosaur fossils that are known in other parts of the world.
Specifically the ones from China, because they preserve so much soft tissue information.
Instead of just bones, we have wing membranes, we have little filaments that look like primitive
feathers. Pterosaurs clearly inspire us in ways that
few other animals do. Something about large flying reptiles from
the distant past, I think, kind of feels like aliens to us.
But they were real animals. And that makes them all the more fascinating.
I don't think anyone sees a pterosaur--whether a paleontologist, child adult.
They look at one and they just think it's a really strange-looking animal, and they
want to know more about it.