Guide / Pterosaurs / Profile
Pteranodontidae · Late Cretaceous
Pteranodon longiceps
/teh·RAN·oh·don/ · "winged and toothless"
The most famous pterosaur of all — the crested, toothless silhouette that soared over an inland sea, snatching fish from the surface.
illustration plate — gliding pose, long backward crest. Drop your reconstruction here.
If you have ever seen a pterosaur in a film or on a cereal box, it was almost certainly Pteranodon: the long, backward-pointing head crest, the toothless beak, the broad gliding wings. Its name means "winged and toothless", and it is known from hundreds of specimens collected from the chalk of Kansas — once the bed of a vast inland sea that split North America in two.
Pteranodon lived above the Western Interior Seaway, hundreds of kilometres from any shore. With a wingspan of six to seven metres but a body lighter than a large dog, it was built for effortless, soaring flight — an oceanic glider in the mould of an albatross. It almost certainly fed on fish, snatched from at or near the surface with its long, toothless jaws, perhaps while floating on the water between flights.
The crest is the great puzzle. It was too large and too variable to be a simple rudder. The strongest clue is that it differed between individuals: some specimens have small crests, others enormous ones. This points to sexual dimorphism — the large-crested animals were likely males, the small-crested females, and the crest was a display signal, much like a peacock's tail or a deer's antlers.
Those same two body types also differ in size and hip shape, supporting the idea of males and females preserved side by side in the same chalk.
On the ground Pteranodon would have folded its wings and moved on all fours, the wing-finger swept up and back. But it was an animal of the open air above open water — among the most thoroughly aerial creatures the Mesozoic ever produced.