Why Are Pterodactyls Not Dinosaurs?

No matter how much you like pterodactyls, you’ll want to think twice before telling someone that they’re your favorite dinosaur.

Since as early as 1834 the scientific community has considered pterodactyl an outdated informal name for members of the order Pterosauria, which includes all flying reptiles that lived in the Mesozoic Era (252.2 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs were the first reptiles capable of flight and the first vertebrates to successfully fly, a feat they accomplished by using strong forelegs to launch their bodies into the air. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin that was connected to the hand by an elongated fourth finger, not unlike the fleshy wings of bats.

But though pterosaurs lived among dinosaurs—and certainly looked like dinosaurs to the untrained eye—the two groups are not the same. (Don’t be fooled, though: it’s not the wings that set them apart. Dinosaurs have some airborne descendants of their own.)

Like humans and apes, pterosaurs and dinosaurs shared a common ancestor that explains the creatures’ resemblance. (Similarly, you could no more accurately call a pterosaur a dinosaur than you could call a human an ape.) Both pterosaurs and dinosaurs were part of the clade Avemetatarsalia within the subclass Archosauria, the latter of which includes both the close relatives of crocodiles and the close relatives of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Within Avemetatarsalia, though, there is a clear line of division: dinosaurs and their close relatives are on one side, within Dinosauromorpha, and pterosaurs are on the other. And while modern birds claim dinosaurs as their ancestors, no pterosaur descendant avoided extinction.

If you can’t get a fossilized reptile to tell you about its family, pterosaurs and dinosaurs can be distinguished by way of their bones. Skeletally, the two groups diverged about 250 million years ago, leading to a number of physical differences, most notably in their appendages: while dinosaurs had an empty hole in their hip socket and a long crest in their upper arm bone, pterosaurs had neither.

All of this means, unfortunately, that you shouldn’t call a pterosaur your favorite dinosaur. Your favorite ancient flying reptile? Certainly! And when it comes to ancient reptiles, there’s always more to learn—and more misconceptions to correct. For instance: Did dinosaurs really have feathers?