Dino card No. 0033 of 2,027

Aerodraco

Say it: AIR-oh-DRAY-ko

Name means: “air dragon”3

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Aerodraco was a flying reptile that soared over the seas of England about 105 million years ago. It was a pterosaur, not a dinosaur, and it had a long beak full of teeth for catching fish.3 1

Fun fact: pterosaurs flew over the dinosaurs, but they were their cousins, not dinosaurs themselves.

Lived

106 to 100 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Cambridge Greensand, England, United Kingdom3

Food

Fish3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Aerodraco was named in 2020 by scientists Holgado and Pegas, who studied old fossils and gave them a new name.3 1

It belonged to a group of pterosaurs called coloborhynchines, which had a bony crest on top of their snouts.1

Its fossils were found in marine rocks, so it probably lived near the coast and flew over the ocean.3

Aerodraco lived during the Late Albian age, about 106 to 100 million years ago.3

The only known species is Aerodraco sedgwickii, which was originally thought to be a different pterosaur.3 1

AI-made picture of Aerodraco — An AI-made picture of how Aerodraco might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

you asked

Most asked questions about Aerodraco

?How big was Aerodraco?

Its exact size is unknown because only a partial snout has been found, but it was probably a medium-sized pterosaur with a wingspan of a few metres.2 1

?What did Aerodraco eat?

It ate fish, using its long beak full of teeth to catch them near the coast.2

?When did Aerodraco live?

It lived about 105 to 100 million years ago, during the Late Albian and Cenomanian ages.2 1

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Aerodraco
Named by: Holgado and Pegas 20203
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Anhangueridae3
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea3
Age of the rocks: 106 to 100 million years (Albian)3
Rock formations: West Melbury Marly Chalk3
Countries: United Kingdom3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Aerodraco was named in 2020 by Borja Holgado and Rodrigo V. Pêgas, who re-examined a fossil that had been called Pterodactylus sedgwickii since 1859.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure about the exact size of Aerodraco because only a few bone fragments have been found.3

Where the facts come from

A taxonomic and phylogenetic review of the anhanguerid pterosaur group Coloborhynchinae and the new clade Tropeognathinae - Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (app.pan.pl)
Aerodraco (en.wikipedia.org)
Aerodraco in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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