Rhamphorhynchus



Rhamphorhynchus is an iconic coastal pterosaur that lived in Late Jurassic Europe. It is a common find in Germany, especially in the fantastic lithographic limestone quarries of the Solnhofen deposits, which were once saline lagoons behind the coral reefs of the azure beauty of the Late Jurassic Tethys Sea covering much of Europe, and anoxic traps that could have suffocated passing marine life and and preserved them and anything else that sunk into them dead aleady, in the most exquisite manner.

They ranged from 3-5 1/2 feet in wingspan; large for the long tailed Rhamphorhynchoids, but tiny compared with the much later giants of the Pterodactyloid Pterosaurs (the short tailed forms) of the Cretaceous Period, which in the case of Ornithocheirus and Quetzalcoatlus, could grow beyond 40 feet in wingspan.