Reptiles learn to glide
Long before birds or bats, small reptiles extend rods of bone into wings and take to the air.
- When
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Permian, Paleozoic
Weigeltisaurids such as Coelurosauravus, from the Late Permian of Europe and Madagascar, bore membranes stretched over dozens of hollow rods growing from the body wall — not modified ribs, and unlike any structure in a living animal. They could glide between trees. It is the earliest known vertebrate flight of any kind, some sixty million years before pterosaurs.