Big dinosaur questions
Pteranodon, pterodactyls, Quetzalcoatlus... we all call them flying dinosaurs, and not one of them was a dinosaur! They were pterosaurs, flying reptiles that lived at the same time.
So did any dinosaur fly? YES, and you might spot one out of the window right now.
Only one of us is a dinosaur. And it's me!
Names
When people say “flying dinosaur”, they almost always mean a pterosaur. Say it: TERR-oh-sore. The P is silent, just like in pterodactyl and Pteranodon!
Pterosaurs were reptiles with wings made of skin. The first ones turn up about 215 million years ago, and the last ones died out 66 million years ago, at the same time as the dinosaurs.
Pterosaur say it: TERR-oh-sore
The name for the whole group of flying reptiles. The smallest were the size of a sparrow. The biggest had wings more than 9 meters (30 feet) across.
Pterodactyl say it: TERR-oh-DAK-til
What most people call any pterosaur. It's also a real one, Pterodactylus, the very first pterosaur ever found, in Germany in 1784. The name means “wing finger”.
Pteranodon say it: teh-RAN-oh-don
One famous pterosaur, with a big crest and no teeth at all. It flew over what is now Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, and it was the first pterosaur ever found in the USA.
The big question
No, and no! Pterosaurs and dinosaurs are cousins. They both belong to a big family of reptiles called archosaurs. But, as the Natural History Museum in London puts it, “dinosaurs didn't evolve into pterosaurs, and pterosaurs didn't evolve into dinosaurs.”
Scientists tell them apart by the hips and legs. Every dinosaur stood with its legs straight underneath its body, the way you do. And a dinosaur's hip socket has a hole right through it, while a pterosaur's is a solid cup of bone.
Riddle · who am I?
My wings were wider than a car, tip to tip.I scooped up fish, but my beak had no teeth to grip!
Everyone calls me a dinosaur. Oh my!I'm a flying reptile, the king of the sky!
Pteranodon!
The clue explained: Surprise: Pteranodon was not a dinosaur. It was a pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived at the same time. Its name means "wing without tooth". (Field Museum)
The family tree
CrocodilesNot dinosaursPterosaursNot dinosaurs
DinosaursDinosaurs
BirdsDinosaurs!Crocodiles are part of the family, but they're not dinosaurs either. Watch how a crocodile walks: its legs stick out to the sides, like a lizard's. A dinosaur's legs went straight down underneath it.
How they flew
Pterosaur wings were thin sheets of skin, stretched from the arms all the way down to the ankles. One very long finger held up the front edge of each wing. Their bones were mostly hollow and full of air, like a bird's, so even the giants were surprisingly light.
And the giants were GIANT. Quetzalcoatlus (say it: ket-zal-co-AHT-lus) had wings about 11 meters (36 feet) across, the same as a small aeroplane. It's the biggest animal that has ever flown.
Nearly as tall as a giraffe, and much lighter
On the ground, Quetzalcoatlus stood about 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall at the shoulder. A grown-up giraffe is only a little taller there, at 2.75 meters. But a giraffe weighs more than 1,000 kilograms, and Quetzalcoatlus weighed up to 250. Hollow bones, remember?
Quetzalcoatlus about 11 m (36 ft)a pterosaur, as wide as a small aeroplane
Pteranodon 5.5 m (18 ft)a pterosaur, wider than a car
Albatross up to 3.4 m (11 ft)the longest wings of any bird, so a real flying dinosaur
You, arms out about 1.2 m (4 ft)if you're about 1.2 m tall
Lots of pterosaurs lived the way seabirds do today, and ate fish. Pteranodon fossils have even been found with fish bones where their stomachs used to be. With no teeth at all, it probably snatched fish out of the water, like some toothless seabirds do now.
Only in the movies! Real pterosaurs were light for their size, and many of them spent their days fishing, not picking up people.
The dinosaurs that really fly
Birds evolved from a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. That's T. rex's group! (Birds came from the small ones, though, not from giants like T. rex.) The oldest bird-like fossils are more than 150 million years old, and today there are at least 11,000 kinds of birds.
That means the pigeon in the park is a dinosaur. So is the robin in the garden, and the chicken on the farm.
Yes! Every bird is. Which makes Katia's Velociraptor fact from Dinosaurs Are Back extra funny:
Velociraptors were small, like a big turkey, but very fast!
A dinosaur the size of a dinosaur. Velociraptor facts
Wait. Chickens are dinosaurs? I once brought a hungry Velociraptor some chickens to get her talking. So I fed dinosaurs to a DINOSAUR?!
Spike, the young Triceratops from Dinosaurs Are Back
Feathers
Lots of dinosaurs had feathers, not just birds. Velociraptor did. And little Microraptor, about the size of a crow, had feathered wings on its legs as well as its arms. Scientists think it could probably really fly, like a bird. So Microraptor was a flying dinosaur! It lived in China about 120 million years ago.
66 million years ago
When a giant asteroid hit the Earth, all the other dinosaurs died out (here's what happened). Some birds made it. Scientists think that's because they were small, they could eat lots of different foods, and they could fly away.
Meet a bird's giant cousinBirds came from T. rex's group. Open the T. rex page on a phone or tablet, tap “See it in your room”, and it stands on your floor.T. rex in 3D →Questions kids ask
Keep asking
Is Brontosaurus real?Scientists took its name away in 1903. In 2015 they gave it back.Find out →
What was the biggest dinosaur?Longer than three school buses! Meet the giants, the biggest meat-eater and the smallest dinosaur too.Find out →
Which long neck dinosaur is which?They're called sauropods. How to tell them apart, and which one had the longest neck of all.Find out →
What was the fastest dinosaur?Probably one that looked a lot like an ostrich. And the fastest dinosaur of all is alive today.Find out →Or meet all ten dinosaurs from Dinosaurs Are Back, each with a fun fact and a riddle.
The book · ages 6 to 10
Spike's big adventure, with a T. rex, a turkey-sized Velociraptor and eight more real dinosaurs that step off the page with a phone or tablet.
Katia's facts are from the last page of Dinosaurs Are Back. Everything else was checked on these pages on September 27, 2026.
Picture credits