Pterosaur

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Rhamphorhynchoidea

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Pterodactyloidea

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Pterosaurs (TEH-row-sore, "winged lizards," often incorrectly referred to as "pterodactyls" (TEH-row-DAK-tils) were flying reptiles of the clade Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous period (228 to 65 million years ago). The earlier species had long, fully-toothed jaws and long tails, while later forms had a stump for a tail, no teeth and a jaw more like a beak than the elongated jaw of the earlier species. Pterosaurs are classified as archosaurs, along with crocodiles and dinosaurs (and the dinosaurs' descendants, the birds).

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Clade: A clade is group of organisms which share a common ancestor and which includes all decendents of that ancestor. Taxonomy which requires all taxa to be clades is called cladistics. A clade may or may not conform to an existing taxon. A clade is thus a monophyletic group of organisms. The term evoluti...

Triassic: The Triassic is a geologic period that extends from about 245 to 202 million years ago (mya). As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events. The extinction event tha...

Cretaceous: The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period (about 146 MYA) to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period (65.5 mya). The end of the Cretaceous also defines the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic...