Yikes! There’s an airborne pterosaur!
The new adventure film “Flying Monsters 3-D” explores the question of whether flying reptiles were indeed fact or fantasy.
Scientists believe that vertebrates known as pterosaurs did indeed soar, glide and fly in the skies above the Earth millions of years ago.
Using state-of-the-art 3-D computer-generated imagery, the film re-creates these creatures, known as pterosaurs, and gives audiences a pterosaur’s-eye view of a “hyper-realistic prehistoric Earth.”
Famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who narrates the film, worked with scientists and engineers to unravel the mystery of how these creatures could fly and the story of their evolution, according to press information provided by the National Geographic Films website.
About 220 million years ago, when dinosaurs were beginning to dominate the Earth, pterosaurs did something that scientists consider revolutionary: They took control of the skies. Pterosaurs are believed to have been the first animals ever to fly.
The movie, which opens Saturday, Sept. 22, at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, presents an array of pterosaurs. Among them are:
Quetzalcoatlus, which had a wingspan that reached to more than 35 feet, the longest of any animal that had ever lived on Earth, and it was the largest animal to have ever flown.
Dimorphodon had a large, bulky skull. Thin, bony partitions separated its body cavities. It is believed to have eaten fish and small animals.
Darwinopterus lived 160 million years ago and was about the size of a crow. It had anatomical elements of both early and advanced pterosaurs.