Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various pterosaurs of the group Pterodactyloidea of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, having a short tail or no tail, and including the pteranodon.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An extinct reptile of the genus Pterodactylus or order Pterosauria; a pterosaurian; an ornithosaurian; a flying-dragon. Also pterodactylian.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Paleon.) An extinct flying reptile; one of the Pterosauria. See Illustration in Appendix.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of various small, mostly tailless, extinct flying reptiles of the order Pterosauria that existed during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun extinct flying reptile

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Pterodactylus, genus name : Greek pteron, feather, wing; see –pter + Greek daktulos, finger.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek πτερόν (pteron, "wing") + δάκτυλος (dactulos, "finger")

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Examples

  • Side note, the music played when Toth-Amon floats off the dark tower balcony and hand-animates into that rad mist-pterodactyl is the some of the best music out of both Conans.

    Stephen Lang Offered Conan Villain Role | /Film 2010

  • A mere explanation that a pterodactyl was a kind of flying reptile belonging to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods was insufficient.

    DEVELOPMENT A NOVEL BY W. BRYHER WITH A PREFACE BY AMY LOWELL 1920

  • No matter a persons' level of scientific knowledge most can identify a picture of a flying reptile as a "pterodactyl".

    Archive 2009-07-01 Weapon of Mass Imagination 2009

  • No matter a persons' level of scientific knowledge most can identify a picture of a flying reptile as a "pterodactyl".

    Life's Time Capsule: Pterosaur Gallery Weapon of Mass Imagination 2009

  • I'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings.

    Mark Twain`s speeches; with an introduction by William Dean Howells. 1910

  • Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar.

    Mark Twain`s speeches; with an introduction by William Dean Howells. 1910

  • It’s essentially the same as my version, but instead of having our heroes Basil and Louise in little, white boxes, they’re riding the pterodactyl, which is exactly where they should be.

    Attack of the Volcano Monkeys Michael May 2008

  • Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even the prisoner at the bar.

    Mark Twain's Speeches Mark Twain 1872

  • I'd like to hear him try in private, and when he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings.

    Mark Twain's Speeches Mark Twain 1872

  • You see, there's this sort of dragonlike flying reptile that used to exist, called a pterodactyl, and this is a flying moon, so - "

    Yon Ill Wind Anthony, Piers 1996

Comments

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  • "Pterodactyls or pterodactyloids (meaning "winged finger") were flying, prehistoric reptiles. They were a subgroup of pterosaurs and were not dinosaurs." (As I'm sure ptero would tell us.) (enchantedlearning.com)

    August 29, 2008

  • I've known since about age 5 -- my dinosaur phase -- that pterodactyls are not dinosaurs. (And being 5, I would go around telling this to everyone. Five-year-olds are masters of the non sequitur).

    What I didn't find out until recently is that, while some pterosaurs were quite large, pterodactylus was fairly small.

    Quoting Wikipedia:

    "Pterodactylus was a relatively small pterosaur genus, with adult wingspans ranging from 50 centimeters (1.5 ft) in P. kochi to 2.4 meters (8 ft) in P. grandis."

    I feel diminished. I feel inadequate. I feel like I need to go out and buy a huge prehistoric SUV to compensate.

    September 1, 2008

  • An off-road Guzzladon, maybe? How about a list of Prehistoric SUV Names instead?

    September 1, 2008

  • UAV! Now we know what ptero's REALLY been up to lately...

    March 12, 2010

  • *pays ptoll pto pthe pterodactyl*

    December 2, 2011