The 2016 Royal Tyrrell Museum Speaker Series kicks off with a look at everyone's favourite flying reptiles.
The first session will be presented by the museum's curator of dinosaurs Dr. Don Henderson entitled 'Over the Heads of Dinosaurs - Pterosaurs.'
This presentation will introduce pterosaurs and highlight many of their exceptional fossils found in the past twenty years, and will explain how our understanding of these mysterious animals has dramatically improved over this short time.
"These were the flying reptiles that appeared at about the same time as dinosaurs and went extinct at the same time," said Henderson.
"They're found all over the world. They're bones are super fragile, so they're extremely rare."
Pterosaurs first appear in the fossil record as fully-evolved, specialized, flying animals, so their evolutionary origins are still a bit of a mystery. They ranged from the size of a sparrow all the way up to the largest flying animals known with wingspans of 10-12 metres.
They were the first backboned animals to evolve active, powered, flapping flight, and did so many tens of millions of years before birds, and 170-million years before bats.
Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. It's held every Thursday until April 28 at 11:00 a.m. in the Museum auditorium.