Pterosaur wing

A pterosaur’s flight surface was a membrane supported chiefly by its elongated fourth finger and attached to the body and hindlimbs. Its form and supporting tissues varied across pterosaur groups.

Pterosaur flight: The aerodynamic flight of pterosaurs, enabled by powered flapping and shaped by their anatomy and environment. The wing was the surface pterosaurs used to generate aerodynamic forces in flight.
Pterosaur: An extinct group of flying reptiles that lived from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous. The wing was a defining anatomical feature of this group.
Sordes: A small Late Jurassic pterosaur from Kazakhstan known from fossils preserving impressions of its body and wing membranes. Its preserved membrane traces helped inform reconstructions of pterosaur wing boundaries.
Bird wing: A bird’s forelimb, modified for flight and usually bearing flight feathers. Birds used feathered wings rather than a membrane stretched chiefly across an elongated finger.
Fourth metacarpal: The hand bone connecting a vertebrate’s fourth finger to the wrist; in pterosaurs it was greatly elongated. It anchored the elongated wing finger that stretched and supported the membrane.
Wing membrane: A thin, flexible tissue surface that generates aerodynamic forces in flight. Pterosaur wings were membranes rather than feathered surfaces.
Jeholopterus: A small anurognathid pterosaur from Early Cretaceous China, notable for exceptionally preserved soft tissues. Its fossil preserves membrane and body coverings that bear on wing anatomy.
Bat wing: A mammalian flight surface formed by skin membranes supported by elongated fingers and attached to the body. Bat wings also use membranes, but distribute support across several elongated fingers.
Pteroid bone: A distinctive pterosaur wrist bone that projected toward the shoulder and supported the wing’s leading-edge membrane. It helped shape the membrane near the wing’s leading edge.
Fourth finger: The digit corresponding to the ring finger in the human hand, homologous with the fourth digit in other tetrapods. This digit became the pterosaur wing’s main structural spar.

Linked from 17 pages