This cast of a fossil of Nemicolopterus crypticus, one of the smallest pterosaurs, was discovered in northeastern China in 2008. Its fossil skeleton, with its curved toe bones, suggests it could cling to the branches or trunks of trees. Nemicolopterus, about the size of a modern sparrow, may have darted through forests hunting for insects, snapping them up in its toothless jaws.
Learn about N. crypticus and other flying prehistoric creatures when the American Museum of Natural History’s “Pterosaurs: Flight In the Age of Dinosaurs” opens at our museum on Saturday, January 30, 2016. ©AMNH/C. Chesek