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Rhamphorhynchus
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
Rhamphorhynchus was found in the Altmühltal, Painten, which also holds these dinosaurs: the same region and broad span of time.
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
- Rhamphorhynchidae
- When it lived
- 143.1–159 million years ago
- Geologic stages
- Oxfordian – Tithonian
- Named by
- Carroll, 1988
- Fossil occurrences
- 30 sites
Countries with fossils
- Germany
- Portugal
- Tanzania
- United Kingdom
Data from Paleobiology Database and Wikidata