First pterosaurs take flight
c. 228 million years ago · Event
Pterosaurs — flying reptiles on wings of skin stretched over one enormous finger — become the first vertebrates ever to achieve powered flight, beating birds to the sky by some eighty million years. Not dinosaurs but their close cousins, they will rule the air for the whole Mesozoic, from sparrow-sized darters to giants with the wingspan of a small aircraft.
On these timelines: The Age of Dinosaurs, Master
More from The Age of Dinosaurs
- Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction (66000000 BCE)
- Tyrannosaurus rex (68000000 BCE)
- Mesozoic Era (252000000 BCE)
- Paleozoic Era (541000000 BCE)
- Jurassic Period (201000000 BCE)
- Cretaceous Period (145000000 BCE)
- Triassic Period (252000000 BCE)
- Archaeopteryx and the first birds (150000000 BCE)
Around 228000000 BCE
- First dinosaurs (230000000 BCE)
- First mammals (225000000 BCE)
- Archosaurs emerge (250000000 BCE)
- Coelophysis (216000000 BCE)
- Plateosaurus (214000000 BCE)