Dino card No. 1537 of 2,015

Rhamphorhynchus

Say it: RAM-foh-RINK-us

Name means: “beak snout”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesLate Jurassic to Early CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Rhamphorhynchus was a flying reptile that lived in the Late Jurassic. It had a very long tail with a diamond-shaped flap at the tip. It used its needle-like teeth to catch slippery fish.1 2

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

Lived

159 to 143 million years ago4

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Bavaria, Germany (Solnhofen limestone), and also England, Tanzania, Spain and Portugal1 3

Food

Fish1 3

Length

0.5 m2

about 50 cm (20 inches) long including the tail

Artist's life restoration of Rhamphorhynchus — How Rhamphorhynchus may have looked, by Louis Figuier. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Its tail was stiffened with ligaments and ended in a diamond-shaped rudder, which may have helped it steer while flying.1 2

Rhamphorhynchus had no teeth at the very tip of its beak, but the rest of its beak held many forward-angled teeth that interlocked to trap fish.1

Fossils of Rhamphorhynchus often show impressions of soft parts, including wing membranes and fuzz-like pycnofibers.1

It probably swam and launched from the water like modern birds, not just flew over the waves.1

Rhamphorhynchus lived about 150 to 148 million years ago, during the late Jurassic Period.1

Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Rhamphorhynchus was a dinosaur.

Truth: Rhamphorhynchus was a pterosaur, a flying reptile, not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Rhamphorhynchus
Named by: Meyer 18474
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Rhamphorhynchidae4
Classification: Pterosauria > Rhamphorhynchidae4
Age of the rocks: 159 to 143 million years (Oxfordian to Tithonian)4
Rock formations: Solnhofen, Solnhofener Plattenkalk, Painten4
Countries: Germany, Portugal, Tanzania, United Kingdom4
Fossil records: 30 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The first specimen was brought to scientist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring in 1825. It was later named Ornithocephalus muensteri by Goldfuss in 1831, and then renamed Rhamphorhynchus by Hermann von Meyer in 1847.1 3
Still debated: Scientists still debate exactly how many species of Rhamphorhynchus there were, because many similar fossils have been given different names.1

Where the facts come from

Rhamphorhynchus (en.wikipedia.org)
Rhamphorhynchus | Pterosaur, Jurassic & Flying Reptile | Britannica (britannica.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Rhamphorhynchus 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.