Dorygnathus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Dorygnathus had fangs so large and curved that when its jaws slammed shut, the teeth from the top and bottom rows interlocked like the tines of two forks pressed together, creating a fish trap that nothing wriggled out of.
• ✓The shallow seas that covered much of Early Jurassic Europe about 183 million years ago, called the Tethys Sea, were Dorygnathus's hunting ground, and fossils have been found preserved in the famous Posidonia Shale of Germany alongside fish, ichthyosaurs, and marine reptiles.
• ✓Dorygnathus was formally described by German paleontologist Friedrich August von Quenstedt in 1858, making it one of the earliest pterosaurs to be scientifically studied, and its name was fully established by Harry Seeley in 1870.
• ✓The eye sockets of Dorygnathus were the single largest opening in its entire skull, suggesting it relied heavily on sharp, keen eyesight to spot fish glinting beneath the surface of the shallow Jurassic seas from the air.
• ✓Despite looking fearsome, Dorygnathus weighed barely as much as a large pigeon, and its small triangular sternum, the bone where flight muscles anchor, tells scientists its flight style was probably more flapping and maneuverable than soaring and gliding.