Dino card No. 1258 of 2,027

Nesodactylus

Say it: NEE-so-DAK-tih-lus

Name means: “island finger”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesLate Jurassic to Early CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Nesodactylus was a pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived during the Late Jurassic. It had long wings and strong legs, and it probably flew over the sea catching fish to eat.1 2

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

Lived

162 to 143 million years ago2

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Cuba (Pinar del Río)1 2

Food

Fish2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Nesodactylus lived about 156 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic.1

Its fossils were collected in 1918 by Barnum Brown, but they were not prepared until 1966, when Richard Lund dissolved the rock in acid to reveal the bones.1

The name Nesodactylus means 'island finger', because it was found on the island of Cuba and pterosaurs have a long wing finger.1

Nesodactylus had longer wings and more robust limbs than its relative Rhamphorhynchus, though it was about the same size.1

It belonged to the group Rhamphorhynchidae, which were pterosaurs with long tails.1 2

The only known skeleton is a partial one, including parts of the skull, spine, wings, legs, and a deeply keeled breastbone.1

AI-made picture of Nesodactylus — An AI-made picture of how Nesodactylus 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.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Nesodactylus
Named by: Colbert 19692
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Rhamphorhynchidae2
Classification: Pterosauria > Rhamphorhynchidae2
Age of the rocks: 162 to 143 million years (Oxfordian / Tithonian)2
Rock formations: Jagua2
Countries: Cuba2
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Nesodactylus was named by Edwin H. Colbert in 1969, based on a partial skeleton collected by Barnum Brown in 1918 from the Jagua Formation in Cuba.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether Nesodactylus was a rhamphorhynchine or a more basal rhamphorhynchid, because the fossils are incomplete.1

Where the facts come from

Nesodactylus (en.wikipedia.org)
Nesodactylus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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