Jul 7, 2011 12:01 GMT  ·  By
This is a rendition of Quetzalcoatlus, the largest pterosaur that ever lived
   This is a rendition of Quetzalcoatlus, the largest pterosaur that ever lived

After the first flying reptiles – pterosaurs – took to the skies tens to hundreds of millions of years ago, birds emerged in the world as well. Despite the fact that they were in direct competition with each other, the two groups continued to thrive, evolve and diversify in parallel.

Fossil records show that this continued for millions of years after the appearance of birds. The study that came to this important conclusion was conducted University of Bristol student Katy Prentice.

As part of her MSci degree in Palaeontology and Evolution, the student focused her research on analyzing the peculiar way in which other researches indicated the pterosaurs evolved. In all, they spent more than 160 million years roaming Earth's skies before going extinct.

In a new paper published in the latest issue of the esteemed Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, the Bristol researcher and her team provide numerous details about the lives and behavior of the amazing flying reptiles.

“Usually, when a new group of animals or plants evolves, they quickly try out all the options. When we did this study, we thought pterosaurs would be the same,” Prentice and her team explain.

“Pterosaurs were the first flying animals – they appeared on Earth 50 million years before Archaeopteryx, the first bird – and they were good at what they did. But the amazing thing is that they didn’t really begin to evolve until after the birds had appeared,” she adds.

Working together with Bristol professor Michael Benton and Dr. Marcello Ruta, Prentice conducted in-depth studies on the fossils of more than 50 different pterosaur specimens. This selection covered every body size, from a black bird-like creature to the mighty Quetzalcoatlus.

The latter is believed to have been the greatest flying lizard of all, with a wingspan measuring more than 12 meters in some specimens – larger than the wings of many airplanes in circulation today. Quetzalcoatlus' wings were 4 times larger than today's largest bird, the albatross.

“Pterosaurs were at the height of their success about 125 million years ago, just as the birds became really diverse too,” Dr Ruta explains. The team studies all possible evolutionary adaptations the reptiles went through as they evolved.

“Our new numerical studies of all their physical features show they became three times as diverse in adaptations in the Early Cretaceous than they had been in the Jurassic, before Archaeopteryx and the birds appeared,” he adds.

“Palaeontologists have often speculated about the coming and going of different groups of animals through time, but the new study provides a set of objective measurements of the relative success and breadth of adaptation of pterosaurs through their long time on the Earth,” Benton concludes.