The Extent of the Pterosaur Flight Membrane | Semantic Scholar

The bending strength of the wing spar of a 6 m wingspan ornithocheirid pterosaur is used to infer the likely membrane tension, supporting the view that the reinforcing aktinofibrils were keratinous.

Basic mechanical and aerodynamic constraints that influenced the wing shape of pterosaurs are reviewed, and a series of theoretical modelling results are presented that show that a combination of anterior sweep and a reflexed proximal wing section provides an aerodynamically balanced and efficient theoretical pterosaur wing shape.

Developmental data now accumulating for extant vertebrate taxa could be helpful in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of body‐plan evolution in extinct vertebrates as well as extant vertebrates with unique morphology whose embryonic materials are hard to obtain.