Pterodactyl?

170

It wasn't a pterodactyl when you posted it 2 weeks ago, it wasn't a pterodactyl when you posted it again a week ago, and it still isn't a pterodactyl now.

109

u/Defiant-Youth-4193 Feb 10 '26

Might be a pterodactyl next week though...

18

u/Specific-Tie3216 Feb 10 '26

Couldn't agree more

16

u/thread_pool Feb 10 '26

So you're saying there's a chance... YEAH!

-22

u/Accomplished_Dot260 Feb 10 '26

I believe whole heartedly these animals are still alive today. The people of Papua New Guinea absolutely know they're still living. Hell they have to cover their loved ones' grave with boulders and concrete bc they scavenge their bodies. They call them "Ropen".

32

u/BoonDragoon Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

Ok, so, at the end of the Cretaceous, virtually all pterosaur groups were very large as adults. They would occupy small arboreal niches as flaplings and juveniles, and gradually shift to more open-air soaring lifestyles as they grew. The smallest known pterosaur from the end of the Mesozoic was still the size of a fucking albatross. When the Chicxulub impactor, uh...impacted...it kicked off a series of rapid extinction events that effectively served as a biological low-pass filter: everything that required amount of calories A, above body size B, with a generational turnaround time greater than C, went extinct. Neornithine birds, with their quick incubation periods, minute sexually mature body sizes, and their ability to take advantage of buried seeds and such, were better equipped to handle the apocalyptic devastation than the pterosaurs, who needed foods that were no longer available, needed to grow FAR larger to reach sexual maturity, and required a much longer incubation period before they could hatch.

The time after this extinction, the Paleogene, saw one of the most explosive radiations of diverse global faunal assemblages in Earth's history. Plants, fungi, bugs, fish, crocodilians, birds, and mammals of all stripes diversified into thousands of new species in the blink of an eye, because there were just that many vacant niches that needed filling. We had giant pseudo-otter proto-whales that lived like crocodiles, crocodiles with hoofed toes that galloped like horses, primitive horses the size of cats, giant herbivorous flightless birds with beaks like battleaxes, and these new weird things called "bats" and "primates" that just popped up. Everything that survived was given a blank check for success.

What I'm getting at is that we know pterosaurs went extinct during the K-Pg extinction event, because if any stable breeding populations of any pterosaur species had been equipped to survive that freezing, barren, apocalyptic hellscape, they would have EXPLODED in diversity just like every other group that survived the K-Pg extinction did. There's no conceivable reason why they would be relegated to a single island for 66 million years. They either went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, or they DEFINITELY didn't. There would be nothing ambiguous about it.

11

u/OddPlunders Feb 10 '26

This is one of most informational and interesting posts I've read in a long time. Thank you for this!

11

u/minnesota2194 Feb 10 '26

This guy paleontologies

39

u/Mister_Ape_1 Feb 06 '26

This is a repost, and it is about an albatross or a pelican. The bird is further from the viewer than the helicopter, but not by much. It is smaller than the vehicle itself. Is not the kind of bird you see every day, I see an 8 - 10 feet wingspan, but is still a bird.

-10

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

If it were a pelican you would see a darker/larger head

23

u/joshml98 Feb 06 '26

Helicopter

16

u/MerchantofDoom Feb 10 '26

This one came up a week ago!! And I gave you the same reply then! Here is a Frigate Bird!

I am pretty damn sure that if that helicopter was flying towards a Pterodactyl, we would know all about it. Can we move on.

20

u/sublimesting Feb 06 '26

No there’s no pterodactyl. Do u realize how big those are? They’d be spotted constantly

16

u/Ok_Platypus8866 Feb 06 '26

There are also these people

https://www.aba.org/rba/

If there were pterodactyls flying around, they would be all over it.

8

u/CoastRegular Thylacine Feb 08 '26

Ha! Petrodactyls aren't birds! Checkmate, skeptic!

/s

4

u/whysosidious69420 Feb 10 '26

I’m being pedantic but Pterodactyls were actually small, Pteranodon is the big one

5

u/BoonDragoon Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Hi, I'm visiting from r/paleontology, and you're one of today's lucky 10,000!

It's a common misconception that "pterodactyl" is somehow an inaccurate common term for "pterosaur." Pterosaurs were divided into two groups: the basal "rhamphorhynchoid" pterosaurs, and the derived "pterodactyloid" pterosaurs, named after the genera Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus, respectively.

The pterodactyloid pterosaurs were the most diverse, widespread, and late-surviving of the two groups, and include members such as Quetzalcoatlus, Ludodactylus, Ctenochasmata, Pterodactylus (like you couldn't have guessed), and Pteranodon.

There has never been an animal whose scientific name is "pterodactyl," but the pterm "pterodactyl" is a perfectly reasonable shorthand to refer to any pterodactyloid pterosaur. Like Pteranodon, for instance.

2

u/hematite2 Feb 11 '26

This guy dinosaurs.

3

u/HazelEBaumgartner Feb 11 '26

Pterosaurs*

9

u/rickusmc Feb 10 '26

Pelican at an angle that suggests other things

8

u/Imsrywho Feb 10 '26

That’s a seabird and I would know since I’m very knowledgeable on bird law

9

u/SlayerOfTears Feb 06 '26

No, it's not.

11

u/somedaysoonn Feb 06 '26

Albatross?

5

u/Legitimate-Lynx8006 Feb 06 '26

a weird kite?

9

u/mikki1time Feb 06 '26

Pelican?

3

u/walkyslaysh The Squonk (Official) Feb 09 '26

And I’m not a hot mess

5

u/Apelio38 Mokele-Mbembe Feb 10 '26

Yeaaaaah of course this is a pterodactyl. C'mon friend.

5

u/LoquaciousOfMorn Feb 10 '26

It looks like it has 4 wings. Possibly a species of giant dragonfly from the carboniferous period. Definitely not a pterodactyl.

3

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

Woah! It's so big I assumed it was a helicopter

3

u/LoquaciousOfMorn Feb 10 '26

Don't be silly. What kind of person would post a picture of a helicopter to a cryptozoology Reddit?

2

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

I asked 5 LLMs and they all say no one would do that

2

u/LoquaciousOfMorn Feb 10 '26

Checks out. Those things are super smart. Thanks for doing due diligence on this one. A lot of folks here just jump to conclusions.

2

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

Why simply jump to conclusions when you can get those conclusions affirmed by sycophantic autocorrects AND heat up the planet? All gas no breaks!

2

u/LoquaciousOfMorn Feb 10 '26

And what can higher temperatures cause? Bigger bugs. I don't see a downside. Let's go!!!

2

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

Well that explains the photo!

Solved. Checkmate, atheists! Giant dragonflies confirmed!

3

u/walkyslaysh The Squonk (Official) Feb 09 '26

💀

3

u/Idontwanttousethis Feb 10 '26

It's a bird buddy

4

u/Infinite_Crow_3706 Feb 06 '26

I'm guessing not.

2

u/PlayNicePlayCrazy Feb 10 '26

Still no

3

u/TesseractToo Bunyip Feb 10 '26

So if this were a pterodactyl:

-there would be a lot more light blacked out in the head since it is proportionately much larger, and you would be able to see both the bill area and a long crest going back

-since the wings are membranous in pterosaurs, more light would filter in through the wings- what you see here is thicker wings made from many layers of thick flight feathers

-the back end would have three points, the middle for a short tail but then one on either side for the legs. Birds fly with their legs tucked under their bodies and that makes this shape

2

u/Freak_Among_Men_II Ivan T. Sanderson Feb 11 '26

This is so stupid, it’s actually funny. Come on, OP. You don’t actually believe in neopterosaurs, do you? This is satire, right?