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Nyctosauridae (meaning "night lizards" or "bat lizards") is a family of specialized soaring pterosaurs of the late Cretaceous Period of North America, Africa, and possibly other continents including South America.
Pterodactylus (from Ancient Greek: πτεροδάκτυλος, romanized: pterodáktylos ' winged finger ' [2]) is a genus of extinct pterosaurs.It is thought to contain only a single species, Pterodactylus antiquus, which was the first pterosaur to be named and identified as a flying reptile and one of the first prehistoric reptiles to ever be discovered.
Pterodactyloidea (/ˌtɛrəˈdækt͡ɬɔɪdɪːə/; derived from the Greek words πτερόν (pterón, for usual ptéryx) "wing", and δάκτυλος (dáktylos) "finger") [1] is one of the two traditional suborders of pterosaurs ("wing lizards"), and contains the most derived members of this group of flying reptiles.
Alexander Kellner, for example, named several additional species for specimens previously classified as Pteranodon, and placed P. sternbergi in a distinct genus, Geosternbergia. Kellner re-defined Pteranodontidae as the most recent common ancestor of Pteranodon longiceps , Geosternbergia sternbergi and Dawndraco kanzai , and all of its descendants.
The Pteranodon family travels to the North Pole where they learn about snow and meet Travis Troodon, who teaches them about cold weather adaptation. Mrs. Pteranodon teaches the kids about Winter solstice, her favorite holiday. Then they learn about conifers, which they use to decorate the Dinosaur Train and their nest.
The animals depicted in fiction and pop culture frequently represent either the Pteranodon or (non-pterodactyloid) Rhamphorhynchus, or a fictionalized hybrid of the two. [210] Many children's toys and cartoons feature "pterodactyls" with Pteranodon-like crests and long, Rhamphorhynchus-like tails and teeth, a combination that never existed in ...
In 2003, it was given a phylogenetic definition by David Unwin as the common ancestor of Pteranodon and Nyctosaurus plus all its descendants. Though Marsh had originally named this group based on the shared absence of teeth in those species, most analyses show that all of the traditional "ornithocheiroid" pterosaurs are also members of this clade.
They estimated that a Pteranodon with a 7 m wingspan would have a mass of about 16 kg. To stay aloft, such a Pteranodon would need to fly at least 6.7 m/s, which is regarded as an "extremely low" minimum speed. [99] Such a load would have allowed it to take off or land "gently".