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The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time
Here is the first complete portrait of the legendary flying dragons of deep time–the pterosaurs–designed for non-specialists, yet founded on the real science of these bizarre creatures. Presented lucidly and accessibly by one of the world’s leading experts, David Unwin’s book is built on a mountain of new fossil discoveries and the latest research. About 220 millions years ago, a group of reptiles took to the Earth’s vast and open skies. No longer tethered to the ground, the earliest pterosaurs evolved into a multitude of diverse forms, spread around the globe, and ruled the skies until they went extinct along with the dinosaurs about 65 millions years ago, rarely leaving fossils as a record of their existence. What they did leave was a mystery for paleontologists to solve; an enigma so difficult to crack that it took centuries of false starts and missteps before the path to a true understanding of pterosaurs was uncovered. Now, an understanding of the fundamental nature of these strange creatures is finally possible. In the last 15 years, stunning new fossil finds and significant advances in technology have led to a breakthrough in our knowledge of pterosaurs. New fossils of the earliest species were discovered in Italy, a remarkably well-preserved and complete wing was found in Central Asia, and, most extraordinarily, a pterosaur embryo inside an egg was unearthed in China. CAT scanning has let researchers glimpse inside pterosaur skulls and construct three-dimensional images of their bodies from crushed bones, and modern techniques for analyzing relationships between species have revealed surprising insights into the evolution of the group. Drawing on these and other advances, David Unwin, caretaker of Archaeopteryx and curator at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, paints pterosaurs and their world more vividly than has previously been possible. He eloquently reconstructs their biology and behavior. Pterosaurs weren’t scaly like dinosaurs, but hairy; most were brightly colored and adorned with remarkable head crests; they were excellent fliers with physiologically sophisticated wings; they walked on all fours; and varied in size from eight inches to forty feet in wingspan. He shows how they lived their lives, raised their young, and interacted with the different environments of Mesozoic Earth. Then, building on his thorough examination of their anatomy and lifestyle, and using the powerful technique of cladistic analysis, Unwin unravels the evolutionary history of pterosaurs and establishes their place in the one great tree of life. Packed with 95 color and 30 black and white illustrations–including 10 full-page original color paintings that are scientific recreations of different pterosaur species– The Pterosaurs From Deep Time takes readers on an wondrous expedition back through the lost world of the Earth’s deep past.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 16, 2008
This is another one of those stunningly beautiful books which does service both as a coffee-table conversation piece and a source of fascinating information on an important scientific topic. Pterosaurs, which arose in the Late Triassic, were the very first flying vertebrates, followed much later by the birds and then the mammalian bats. They were the rulers of the Mesozoic skies, occupying a wealth of niches and playing major roles in the ecology of their world. They were one of the world's longest-lasting clades, as well, lasting some 170 million years on the world stage, only dying out at the end of the Cretaceous along with the dinosaurs, the great marine reptiles of the Mesozoic, the ammonites, and other tragic casualties of the End-Cretaceous Event. Though they are often popularly portrayed as ugly and demonic-looking, in fact, as the lavish color illustrations in this book show, many pterosaurs may have been in their way beautiful, sporting a riot of bright colors as social signals, and gliding across the world as gracefully as octopi, the belly-dancers of the seas, glide through the waters of their world. Pterosaurs are odd for a number of reasons; one of the oddest is that apparently baby pterosaurs sprang from the egg fully functional and ready to take to the Mesozoic skies, catch prey, and otherwise do what all good pterosaurs must if they were to survive and reproduce their kind. They also exhibited a huge variety of variations on their basic body plan, from size (sparrow-sized midget to HUGE with 50-foot wingspans) to shape of skull (a large variety of skull crests and other appurtenances which could have functioned as social signals, sound modulators for pterosaur calls, and other evolutionary goodies) and ways of life. And, of course, there is the aforementioned possibility of countless decorative and socially functional coloration. Unwin's numerous black-and-white drawings of skeletal conformations and other important characteristics of these amazing animals give valuable insights on pterosaurs and their world. Another treasure to be found at not too great a price on amazon.com or ebay.com.
September 11, 2016
_The Pterosaurs From Deep Time_ by David M. Unwin is a well-written even witty book, one of a very few books on the subject ever written for the general reader. It comes complete with an extensive bibliography, endnotes, and many illustrations, including full-color life restorations, photographs of fossils, and many diagrams illustrating pterosaur evolution, anatomical features, and movement.
The first chapter was a general introduction to these "dragons of the air." These reptiles first took to the air 215 million years during the Triassic and thrived for 150 million years, vanishing with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. Unwin recounted some of the difficulties of studying pterosaurs; many of their fossilized remains consist of only scattered, broken bones (saying little more than "here be pterosaurs"), even complete skeletons are often extremely distorted by geological processes owing to the hollow-tube bones of these animals (forming what he called "picture fossils" or "road-kills"), researchers are often trapped in their thinking by following birds and bats too closely as analogues, and sometimes people are guilty of "temporal chauvinism," the notion that somehow pterosaurs were inherently inferior to modern fliers. Unwin wrote that "pterosaurology" has really taken off starting in the 1990s thanks to remarkable new finds in South America and China, new imaging techniques like CAT scanning and photographing in UV light, and computer modeling of pterosaur movement.
Chapter two was pretty basic, discussing the Mesozoic world in general.
Chapter three, titled "Considering Medusa," discussed how pterosaurs became fossils and showcased some of the most remarkable fossils ever found (my favorite was "the tree-biter", a _Ludodactylus_ from Lower Cretaceous Brazil that apparently got a yucca leaf lodged in its throat sac and starved to death; one can even see the frayed end of the yucca leaf, where the pterosaur may have tried to dislodge it by rubbing it against the ground). Only around 5,000-6,000 pterosaur fossils are known and only 100 have preserved soft parts.
Chapter four looked at the pterosaur family tree, how the approximately 100 species described thus far are related to one another. There were eight main branches, ranging from the dimorphodontids, the least derived of all pterosaurs to the azhdarchoids, the last pterosaurs of the Mesozoic and whose numbers include the largest flying creature of all time, _Quetzalcoatlus_, which may have had wingspans of 10 meters (33 feet) or more. A key point in this chapter is understanding the difference between the earlier rhamphorhynchoids and the later, more diverse pterodactyloids.
Chapter five examined pterosaur head anatomy, which like further anatomical discussions was both informative and not too hard for the interested layperson to follow as his discussion was well-supported with illustrations and helpful definitions. He looked at pterosaur teeth (with few rare exceptions, they had no cutting edges to dismember prey or cut off bite-sized chunks or anything to grind or pulp food, though one group became filter-feeders and another was able to crush clams and crabs in its jaws), how at least one group, the insectivorous anurognathids, had short bristles rimming the edges of their mouths like modern nightjars, helping it to catch insects, and the weird world of pterosaur crests (check out the extraordinary forked crest of _Nyctosaurus_).
Chapter six looked at other features of pterosaur anatomy. It is important in particular to understand the pteroid (there is debate over whether it is equivalent to a thumb or a bone unique to pterosaurs), a bone that had a huge role in pterosaur aerodynamics and the notarium (unique to the larger pterodactyloids). Also discussed are pterosaur body covering ("hair" that wasn't really hair) and issues of pterosaur metabolism (how things like hair, a largish brain, and fibro-lamellar bone tissue are "consistent with an active physiology" but "do not necessarily demand it").
Chapter seven looked at pterosaur young. In 2004, after 200 years, not one but three pterosaur eggs were found in the space of six months. Pterosaurs laid soft-shell eggs, showed no evidence of taking care of their young, and apparently could fly and fend from themselves very shortly after birth (if not immediately). Interestingly, it would seem that pterosaurs at different life stages fed on different prey items and filled different ecological roles (something prevalent in the Mesozoic) and there were few "small" species of pterosaur to compete with young, as the young were the "small" species in effect. Owing to how pterosaurs laid their eggs and issues relating to how big they could get and when they reached sexual maturity, pterosaurs appear to still have much in common with other reptiles.
Chapter eight looked at how pterosaurs flew. Were they passive gliders or active fliers? This chapter showed that they were clearly active fliers and in some ways may have been more efficient than birds or bats. Key points in this chapter are understanding the microscopic structure of wing membranes (particularly the presence and role of wing fibers), the overall arrangement of the flight membranes (the patagia, divided into a propatagium or fore-wing, cheiropatagium or hand-wing - the biggest membrane - and a leg-wing or cruropatagium, which crucially for purposes of ground locomotion and available ecological niches was split up the middle in the pterodacytloids), the role of the pteroid and the notarium, and the role that the webbed feet of pterosaurs played (working much like twin tail fins).
Chapter nine looked at one of the most contentious of issues, how pterosaurs moved upon the ground. The rhamphorhynchoids were excellent climbers but were barely crawlers while the pterodactyloids were quite capable walkers.
Chapter ten looked at the overall history of pterosaur evolution, of when different groups arose, their ecological roles, and when and why they eventually went extinct. Interesting facts include that the rhamphorhynchoids were extremely conservative, evolutionary speaking, changing little in 75 million years; pterosaurs reached their greatest diversity in lifestyles and in numbers of species in the Early Cretaceous (slightly more than half of all known species come from this time), and that only toothless forms survived until the Late Cretaceous.
The first chapter was a general introduction to these "dragons of the air." These reptiles first took to the air 215 million years during the Triassic and thrived for 150 million years, vanishing with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. Unwin recounted some of the difficulties of studying pterosaurs; many of their fossilized remains consist of only scattered, broken bones (saying little more than "here be pterosaurs"), even complete skeletons are often extremely distorted by geological processes owing to the hollow-tube bones of these animals (forming what he called "picture fossils" or "road-kills"), researchers are often trapped in their thinking by following birds and bats too closely as analogues, and sometimes people are guilty of "temporal chauvinism," the notion that somehow pterosaurs were inherently inferior to modern fliers. Unwin wrote that "pterosaurology" has really taken off starting in the 1990s thanks to remarkable new finds in South America and China, new imaging techniques like CAT scanning and photographing in UV light, and computer modeling of pterosaur movement.
Chapter two was pretty basic, discussing the Mesozoic world in general.
Chapter three, titled "Considering Medusa," discussed how pterosaurs became fossils and showcased some of the most remarkable fossils ever found (my favorite was "the tree-biter", a _Ludodactylus_ from Lower Cretaceous Brazil that apparently got a yucca leaf lodged in its throat sac and starved to death; one can even see the frayed end of the yucca leaf, where the pterosaur may have tried to dislodge it by rubbing it against the ground). Only around 5,000-6,000 pterosaur fossils are known and only 100 have preserved soft parts.
Chapter four looked at the pterosaur family tree, how the approximately 100 species described thus far are related to one another. There were eight main branches, ranging from the dimorphodontids, the least derived of all pterosaurs to the azhdarchoids, the last pterosaurs of the Mesozoic and whose numbers include the largest flying creature of all time, _Quetzalcoatlus_, which may have had wingspans of 10 meters (33 feet) or more. A key point in this chapter is understanding the difference between the earlier rhamphorhynchoids and the later, more diverse pterodactyloids.
Chapter five examined pterosaur head anatomy, which like further anatomical discussions was both informative and not too hard for the interested layperson to follow as his discussion was well-supported with illustrations and helpful definitions. He looked at pterosaur teeth (with few rare exceptions, they had no cutting edges to dismember prey or cut off bite-sized chunks or anything to grind or pulp food, though one group became filter-feeders and another was able to crush clams and crabs in its jaws), how at least one group, the insectivorous anurognathids, had short bristles rimming the edges of their mouths like modern nightjars, helping it to catch insects, and the weird world of pterosaur crests (check out the extraordinary forked crest of _Nyctosaurus_).
Chapter six looked at other features of pterosaur anatomy. It is important in particular to understand the pteroid (there is debate over whether it is equivalent to a thumb or a bone unique to pterosaurs), a bone that had a huge role in pterosaur aerodynamics and the notarium (unique to the larger pterodactyloids). Also discussed are pterosaur body covering ("hair" that wasn't really hair) and issues of pterosaur metabolism (how things like hair, a largish brain, and fibro-lamellar bone tissue are "consistent with an active physiology" but "do not necessarily demand it").
Chapter seven looked at pterosaur young. In 2004, after 200 years, not one but three pterosaur eggs were found in the space of six months. Pterosaurs laid soft-shell eggs, showed no evidence of taking care of their young, and apparently could fly and fend from themselves very shortly after birth (if not immediately). Interestingly, it would seem that pterosaurs at different life stages fed on different prey items and filled different ecological roles (something prevalent in the Mesozoic) and there were few "small" species of pterosaur to compete with young, as the young were the "small" species in effect. Owing to how pterosaurs laid their eggs and issues relating to how big they could get and when they reached sexual maturity, pterosaurs appear to still have much in common with other reptiles.
Chapter eight looked at how pterosaurs flew. Were they passive gliders or active fliers? This chapter showed that they were clearly active fliers and in some ways may have been more efficient than birds or bats. Key points in this chapter are understanding the microscopic structure of wing membranes (particularly the presence and role of wing fibers), the overall arrangement of the flight membranes (the patagia, divided into a propatagium or fore-wing, cheiropatagium or hand-wing - the biggest membrane - and a leg-wing or cruropatagium, which crucially for purposes of ground locomotion and available ecological niches was split up the middle in the pterodacytloids), the role of the pteroid and the notarium, and the role that the webbed feet of pterosaurs played (working much like twin tail fins).
Chapter nine looked at one of the most contentious of issues, how pterosaurs moved upon the ground. The rhamphorhynchoids were excellent climbers but were barely crawlers while the pterodactyloids were quite capable walkers.
Chapter ten looked at the overall history of pterosaur evolution, of when different groups arose, their ecological roles, and when and why they eventually went extinct. Interesting facts include that the rhamphorhynchoids were extremely conservative, evolutionary speaking, changing little in 75 million years; pterosaurs reached their greatest diversity in lifestyles and in numbers of species in the Early Cretaceous (slightly more than half of all known species come from this time), and that only toothless forms survived until the Late Cretaceous.
February 3, 2025
Accessible and engagingly written, and well laid out. I read this book in a matter of a few days and was able to soak it in to the point that I now feel like a leading specialist in pterosaurs! (I’m not) As a side note, I don’t know why or how some kind of crime noir information has gotten mixed up in the description of this book on amazon, google books, etc. It is a nonfiction scientific overview, but not a textbook.
September 30, 2025
Easy to read and accessible book. Give a great overall account of pterosaurs from all aspects to give readers a non-overwhelming knowledge of the group. Very helpful diagrams and beautiful reconstructions throughout. Love the footnotes too.
November 17, 2020
A fantastic overview. Perfect for any budding palaeontologist or interested layman
September 26, 2014
A readable summary about pterosaurs. I was interested to learn that there is a missing link for pterosaurs, and we aren't at all sure about how they fit into the rest of the reptile tree. Their bones were even thinner than birds' and they sported some astonishing head crests. Although pteranodon had no teeth, there were others that looked just like him that did, and jaw pouches like pelicans. When I was a kid they hadn't yet worked out how they got about on land, but that's pretty much settled at this point.
June 30, 2013
If you love pterosaurs, this is a great book for you. Pterosaurs will never be as famous as their dinosaurian brethren, but this book does justice to their long and prosperous reign alongside the other Mesozoic reptiles. Pterosaur research has picked up in the last decade or two, and Unwin does a great job of explaining our current understanding of what pterosaurs are, what they did, the different groups that evolved and diversified, and how they eventually met their end.
October 5, 2014
I loved the information. I would have liked a little more detail. However at the same time made it to were the book was an easy read for someone who knows nothing about Pterosaurs.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews