Dino card No. 1273 of 2,027

Ningchengopterus

Say it: ning-CHENG-op-TEER-us

Name means: “wing from Ningcheng”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Ningchengopterus was a tiny flying reptile that lived in what is now China. It had about 50 sharp teeth and a long, pointy snout. Even as a baby, it could fly right after hatching!1

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

Lived

126 to 120 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liutiaogou Village, Dashuangmiao Town, Inner Mongolia, China3 1

Food

Fish1 3

Wingspan

0.21 m2

largest known specimen

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How wide were its wings?

How big was Ningchengopterus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Ningchengopterus had 50 teeth: 12 in each upper jaw and 13 in each lower jaw.1

Its skull was only 38 millimetres long, about the size of a large grape.1

The fossil shows soft parts like the flight membrane and pycnofibres, which are fuzzy hair-like coverings.1

It was the first small toothed pterodactyloid pterosaur ever found in China.1

Scientists think Ningchengopterus could fly right after hatching, with little help from its parents.1

The fossil was collected by Ms Liu Jingyi, who donated it to science.1

AI-made picture of Ningchengopterus — An AI-made picture of how Ningchengopterus 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: Ningchengopterus
Named by: Lü 20093
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Pterodactyloidea3
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea3
Age of the rocks: 126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)3
Rock formations: Yixian3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Ningchengopterus was named and described by Chinese paleontologist Lü Junchang in 2009. The only fossil is a nearly complete skeleton of a hatchling, found in the Yixian Formation of Inner Mongolia.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure which group of pterosaurs Ningchengopterus belongs to. It might be related to the ctenochasmatids, but the evidence is not strong enough.1

Where the facts come from

Ningchengopterus (en.wikipedia.org)
Ningchengopterus liuae | Pterosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
Ningchengopterus 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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