We don't know how pterosaurs evolved powered flight. The most primitive, probable, ancestor of pterosaurs had a bodyplan closer to that of a kangaroo. And the earliest pterosaurs like Preondactylus or Eudimorphodon were already fully capable of flight.

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[–] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (2 children)

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how rare fossilization is.

It requires that the species live in a climate with pretty specific conditions, to die under a few very specific circumstances, at a particular convergence of atypical events. The dino bones we have represent a tiny little fraction of the species that lived.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago

    Plus fossils can form, emerge, and erode away before humans even evolved, thus removing our chances of knowing about species that DID have a chance to fossilize, all because bad luck said the geology between now and then would fuck our knowledge over.

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