Flight Performance Analysis Reveals Problems with Previous Pterosaur Wing Reconstructions
- 演化之聲
- Aug 12
- 5 min read
Pterosaurs (Pterosauria) were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, and their fossil record provides valuable insight into how vertebrates overcame the many challenges associated with becoming airborne. From the Early to the Late Mesozoic, pterosaurs diversified into a remarkable range of flight styles, from species with wingspans of only about 40 cm to the largest flying animals ever known, with wingspans exceeding 10 m. As a result, pterosaur wings provide an ideal system for studying how large flying animals adapted to flight and how wing morphology evolved in association with different ecological niches.
Numerous studies have attempted to infer the flight capabilities of pterosaurs by examining factors such as bone strength, brain anatomy, musculoskeletal reconstructions, and flight mechanics. One of the most common approaches is to compare pterosaurs with living flying animals within the same ecomorphospace, allowing researchers to infer the flight styles that different pterosaurs may have employed.
However, most of these studies have focused primarily on linear skeletal measurements, such as bone lengths, rather than directly analyzing wing membrane shape, which has a much more direct influence on flight performance. This is largely because pterosaur wing membrane fossils are extremely rare. Although a few specimens preserve wing membranes, and some even retain enough detail to reveal the internal fiber structure of the membrane, every known example has been affected either by post-mortem wing folding or by deformation during fossilization, preventing preservation of the fully extended wing shape.
To analyze the overall shape of pterosaur wings, researchers therefore need an alternative source of information. Wing reconstructions published in the scientific literature provide one such source. In addition to serving as illustrations, these reconstructions are frequently used in aerodynamic analyses, flight simulations, and body mass estimations, and therefore embody researchers' scientific hypotheses regarding wing membrane attachment sites, membrane extent, and overall wing shape.
The analyses showed that, in terms of aspect ratio, reconstructions of the long-winged Nyctosaurus performed best, although they still fell short of the theoretical optimal wing shape. In contrast, some reconstructions of Dimorphodon, Eudimorphodon, Quetzalcoatlus, and Anurognathus occupied regions associated with relatively poor performance.
翅膀抗彎能力（以截面二次軸矩 second moment of area 評估）部分，大多數翼龍重建圖都落在表現較佳的位置，不過仍未達到理論最佳值。
Regarding pitch agility, some reconstructions of Pterodactylus and members of Ornithocheiridae performed relatively well, whereas reconstructions of Dimorphodon and Quetzalcoatlus, which featured more strongly curved trailing edges of the wing membrane, performed less favorably.
The researchers also combined multiple flight-performance metrics to evaluate different flight styles, including dynamic soaring, long-distance flight, and aerial predation. The results showed that most pterosaur reconstructions clustered within the optimal region for aerial predation, while Nyctosaurus achieved the highest performance in both the dynamic soaring and long-distance flight analyses.
However, the authors argued that these results were themselves unrealistic. Under normal circumstances, pterosaurs of different body sizes and ecological lifestyles would be expected to possess different optimal wing shapes. It is therefore unlikely that nearly all pterosaurs would converge on the same optimal flight strategy.
The researchers subsequently found that reconstructions of different pterosaur genera overlapped extensively within morphospace, to the extent that genera were often difficult to distinguish based solely on wing shape. While such overlap would be expected among closely related species or taxa occupying similar flight niches, this study included pterosaurs with major differences in body size, evolutionary position, and inferred ecology, yet they still exhibited extensive overlap. This suggests that current wing reconstructions in the scientific literature may underestimate the true morphological diversity of pterosaur wings.
This pattern is unlikely to result simply from some authors producing more simplified reconstructions. The dataset included not only general restoration drawings but also reconstructions that had been used directly in aerodynamic analyses and body mass estimations. Furthermore, every reconstruction represented a specific genus or family rather than a generic pterosaur illustration, and therefore should have reflected differences among taxa.
The researchers also compared the results with living birds, whose wing shapes are closely associated with flight style and ecology. For example, the wings of long-distance soaring albatrosses differ markedly from those of small forest birds adapted for highly maneuverable flight.
The authors argued that it is difficult to imagine pterosaurs inhabiting the open ocean and relying on dynamic soaring possessing almost the same wing shape as small pterosaurs living in forests. Yet this is precisely the pattern displayed by the wing reconstructions currently found in the scientific literature.
The overlap between large and small pterosaurs within morphospace was also unexpectedly high. In general, larger flying animals require greater lift, and their wing shapes would therefore be expected to differ from those of smaller fliers. Among living birds, for example, wing morphology clearly separates large soaring birds from small passerines.
Although pterosaurs are generally considered to have been lighter than birds with equivalent wingspans, potentially reducing their lift requirements, this alone is insufficient to explain the remarkable similarity in wing shapes observed among pterosaurs of vastly different sizes.
Another issue identified by the study is the substantial variation among reconstructions of the same species produced by different researchers. Pteranodon was the only exception, with its reconstructions clustering relatively closely together. This may indicate a higher degree of agreement among researchers. However, it may also simply reflect the fact that Pteranodon is one of the most frequently studied and reconstructed pterosaurs, or that its high-aspect-ratio wings are inherently less affected by differences in wing membrane attachment, making the overall wing outline less sensitive to reconstruction choices. Consequently, this consistency does not necessarily mean that the reconstructions are more accurate.
Taken together, the analyses suggest that current pterosaur wing reconstructions in the scientific literature still lack sufficient consistency. They not only fail to reliably represent the true wing shapes of individual genera but also do not clearly distinguish between Pterodactyloidea and non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs.
The greatest source of variation among reconstructions likely stems from features that remain unresolved, particularly the attachment site of the wing membrane and the curvature of its trailing edge. Although many recent studies have converged on the hypothesis that the wing membrane attached to the ankle, considerable differences remain in how researchers reconstruct the wing in practice, and these differences directly influence the outcomes of wing-shape analyses.
Finally, the authors emphasized that the purpose of this study was not to determine what the "correct" pterosaur wing should have looked like. Doing so would assume that pterosaurs necessarily evolved toward an optimal flight morphology, whereas evolution does not always produce optimal designs. Instead, the researchers argue that, with the discovery of more well-preserved wing membrane fossils and the development of better-resolved phylogenetic frameworks and comparative datasets, theoretical morphospace analyses could become a valuable tool for improving future reconstructions of pterosaur wing morphology.
（Author: Bai Leng）
Reference：
Walters, B., Rayfield, E. J., Donoghue, P. C. J. (2026). Exploring the limits of wing design in pterosaurs. Paleobiology.
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