Mesadactylus
The first vertebrates to truly fly, on wings of skin stretched from a hugely long fourth finger. They ranged from sparrow-sized to wingspans of more than 10 metres.
Who it is related to: The closest relatives of the dinosaurs, splitting off in the Triassic, but not dinosaurs, and not the ancestors of birds.
This page has only the scientific data from the databases; there is no hand-written description yet.
Dinosaurs from the same rocks
Mesadactylus was found in the Morrison, which also holds these dinosaurs: the same region and broad span of time.
Allosaurus
Camarasaurus
Stegosaurus
Apatosaurus
Diplodocus
Camptosaurus
Nanosaurus
Dryosaurus
Formation data from the Paleobiology Database, counting only each genus's main formations. One formation can span hundreds of thousands to millions of years, so this doesn't mean any two of them ever met.
Scientific details
- Group
- Pterosaurs
- Family
- Unknown
- When it lived
- 145.06–152.21 million years ago
- Geologic stages
- Kimmeridgian – Tithonian
- Named by
- Jensen and Padian, 1989
- Fossil occurrences
- 1 sites
Countries with fossils
- United States
Data from Paleobiology Database and Wikidata