The largest flying vertebrates in Earth's
history are taking to the air at The American
Museum of Natural History.
A new exhibition at the New York Museum will
examine the life and history of dinosaur era
reptiles known was Pterosaurs, which were
the first back-boned animals to evolve powered flight.
Pterosaurs as their own unique group -- they
were the first animals with backbones to achieve
true powered flapping flight. So that they're
really unique in that way. They also represent
the largest animals we know of ever to have
powered flight. Some of them have wing spans
up to ten meters across, which is a huge,
huge animal. But as their own group -- they're
not related to birds, they're not related
to bats. They're just a unique group of reptiles
that are closely related to dinosaurs but
aren't dinosaurs. When they evolved, they
were very diverse and they lived on every
continent.
While the reptiles may have become extinct
66 million years ago, scientists believe that
pterosaurs diversified into more than 150
species of different shapes and sizes across
the planet.
