"... if you think we deserve it" My guy, you and your companions are absolute legends and will go down in history. You absolutely deserve all the subscribes.

The different ways that groups of animals have approached gliding and flying are fascinating, insects, mammals, reptiles, fish and even plants have evolved means of combating and defeating gravity independent of one another, even humans with our use of invention and technology have evolved means of flying!

Gliding is great for extending foraging range in forests, but it's really excellent for evading predators!

Post-mass extinction ecosystems are times when Mother Nature went on a crack binge.

9:25 Yes, please. Early archosaur evolution is fascinating.

Greetings from Hungary! I can imagine a certain diapsid species living on trees alongside riverbanks. Some tried to move from one side of the river to the other, they became tanystropheids. Others tried to reach one tree to another by jumping, they became the sharovipterygids. The third, last group stayed on the trees, they became the drepanosauromorphs.

What fascinates me is the prospect of finding more evolved members of these species. Optimistic I guess but evolution throws up some amazing wonders in the fossil record. Thanks Ben.

Prehistoric reptiles and Ben is wearing a shirt with toucans on it? Can't get any better than this.

Hey Ben G Thomas, I would love a video on the Poposauroids, a very bizarre and adaptable group of Pseudosuchians. This group includes the semi-aqautic Qianosaurus, the edaphosaurus-like Lotosaurus, the dimetrodon-like Ctenosauriscids, the Ornithomimus-like Shuvosaurids, and the raptor-like Poposaurus.

I was about to yell about the mismatch between center of lift anf center of gravity, but you adressed it yourself, thanks! Enjoyed it!!

The Triassic was a trip

it would be really funny to know that the Sharovipterygids had been the "flying cousins" of the Tanystropheidae, the first in "aviation" and the second in the navy

Sharovipteryx as always been one of my favorites, ever since I first learned of them in high school. They are so strange and I adore them, I have never clicked on a video faster! Thank you for sharing this bizarre little creature to others!

I can't remember if a video on it has appeared on this channel, but something on the animal I believe is called Smok would be cool. If I recall, it's a fairly large, bipedal, carnivorous archosaur that nobody's really sure about what it exactly is.

Are there any plans by paleontologists for future expeditions to Kyrgyzstan and the Madygen Formation to uncover more Sharovipteryx specimens?

This lizard never skipped leg day.

Any triassic critters get my eyeblinks. Very wide scope for new-to-most animals in the triassic's catalog, so to speak.

Wouldn't it be interesting if ozimek was a marine reptile, but used its gliding skin like flying fish use their fins - as an escape mechanism from predators?

You should do like as much content EXACTLY LIKE THIS! I would watch anything interesting like this! Wonderful job!

As you mentioned modern day Draco, you also could do a video including Kuehneosaurus which was similar.

With all that weight in the back and those long necks, aerodynamics basically demands some kind of canard in the front for lift assist and improved control

Without a doubt they were very unique gliders.

Since the centre of the mass is around the hips of _Sharovipteryx_ , the membrane grew on the rear legs so that the aerodynamic centre shifts closer to the CG of the animal. This is why pterosaur has smaller body around its hips. If it were as big as, say, birds, they would not be as good of a flyer as they are (were?). Fun fact, the problems of differences in CG and aerodynamic centre position was at the core of the problem for Boeing 737MAX, causing 2 crashes. Basically, the new bigger engine changes the CG of the 737MAX in comparison with the older 737s, but the basic design of the aircraft remained unchanged, therefore necessitating a software to compensate for the pitch-up tendency, hence the MCAS thing. But pilots weren't trained and told about said software. It was shit. Sorry for the tangents, I can't not share my passion for aerodynamics (being a former aerospace student/engineer myself).

What if it wasnt flying, but rather swimming..? *aahh, that idea came later in the video*

Fantastic Video!

Brilliant video Ben, I am learning so much about this from you. I have decided in the last year to exercise my mind as well as my body now I am 65 and I have been doing a biology refresher course online as well as the introduction to anthropology. It's really interesting and I'm very interested in how life came about, in how prokaryotic cells became part of eukaryotic cells like mitochondria. It's fascinating and you have been one of the channels that pushed me to do something and refresh and further my education now I have time to do it.

Thanks for this video daddy ben ❤

Human throws a paper airplane: Looky what I can do! Prehistoric Reptiles: Hold my eons.

Fascinating. Thank you.

0:45 what creature is this again? You should totally make a video on nothosaurs and atopodentatus

2:24 Ha! Im literaly liveing next dore to the one who discoverd it

This animal seems like a flying snake ✌️❤️🇬🇧

the only flying creature with a canard delta wing configuration. awesome stuff, ben

Coelurosauravus is an interesting genus of gliding reptile. Their membranes were supported by boney rods coming extending from the rib cage, and they had a boney crest on their head. They looked like miniature dragons.

Apparentlky I just have to wait for my idea of Sharovypterigidae being an aquatic group, not gliders, to eventually just become obvious. It seems, by now there's a new piece of evidence in my favour every week. I mean, now they are nested within Tanystrophaeidae instead of just being close! Even though the confirmation bias inherent in "Those are gliders, because trust me bro!" is strong.

I love these weird little guys. Leg wings, heck yeah.

0:04 One nudesnailplatypusbeakedsaurus says to the other nudesnailplatypusbeakedsaurus: "Why the long face?"

This is up there with Sasquatch and Lochness Monster. Way funny. So seriously delivering silliness. People just love stories about these things.

Granddaddy of the gripen fighter jet

I think it is more reasonable that active flyers evolved from swimming animals. The muscles and bones required for flotation and propulsion in water are more robust than gliding anatomy. Also, failing at flying over water is more conducive to evolutionary success than forest flying failures. Gnaw on that alliterative gum ball, Cardboard Doug!

Its basicly a modern fighter aircraft

Rishisaurus

7:58 you did not just drop an image of a creature with such a cartoony disproportionate head and expect us to be able to move on with the conversation 😂

Sharovipterygidae is a really cool-sounding word. It should be rapped. You guys should definitely make a rap of unique nomenclature.

we still have them today! those gliding lizards in asia

Incredible!

Super vid on these weird little guys! I'm going to politely demand a video on the armoured platypus mimic - how dare you gloss over it.

Can you imagine the individuals of some non-winged basal species just being particularly good at jumping off of things, and now thats your lineage

Fantastic Video! :) 👏👏👏👏👏👏 ❤❤❤❤ 💖💖💖💖

If Sharovipteryx was still around, I'd make one my pet and name it Caraxes

I’m surprised to see how so many dinosaurs had long necks compared to mammals. Wonder what evolutionary pressures caused this.

Believe it or not I am walking on air 🎶

Considering the timing it would make sense for a limited number of groups diverging into a wide range of species across a variety of niches left vacant by The Great Dying.

triassic? i'm cool with seeing anything really, i don't know much about the Triassic i guess from the top of my head, Plateosaurus is a go too for me, but i am also down for things like Nothosaurus

Amazing animals!

Just think of these back legged gliders evolved full flight and had a couple million years to get weird...

Anything Triassic!!!!

f l y w h o o p e e

those flying lizards remind me of those Bolivian Tree Lizards Bart had Bartman & Chirpyboy

I would love to see content on chasmatosaurs!

03:20 how did you even pronounce that?

Can Ben wear a tropical bird shirt and get away with it? Yes, toucan.

Very cool

So, not flight, but jumping with style. Must have been very puzzling and frustrating for any predator, in equal measure.

I doubt that these hind limb fliers were ancestral to pterosaurs. I don't really see them making so many adaptations for hind limb flight only to change lanes completely into forelimb flight. More likely is they would have eventually developed powered hind limb flight with some very interesting adaptations, had they not gone extinct.

Yeah, but gliding isn't really the same as flying is it. I'm a little disappointed to not have learned about the prehistoric reptile which flew with its hind legs...

All this speculation information is great inspiration for my own speculative evolution with a world inhabited by anoles as the main vertebrate ancestors

Imagine if this animal develop a powered flight...

Look to be a frog, a jumper too.

it is interesting to think(with only one sample of the named species known) that if that fossil wasn't so well preserved (perhaps fragmentary or a jumble of bones) we might never know it's unique way of flight, no membrane and perhaps the long legs are for walking upright, or they could be arms for grasping or swinging, or just for sexual dimorphism or mating, maybe used for swimming or grappling....it shows that fossils are all about reconstruction and interpretation....biology, living examples, anatomy, imagination and all the previous research and following work to come and it shows how lucky we can be, one example of a species, preserved so well, we can see it as more than a partial skeleton or a bunch of bones

I think that dragons were just flying lizards the spit out a liquid/mist like the bombardier beetle. And since the liquid/mist was hot and burned the skin it was lost in translation to become fire breathing dragons.

tRICKy here Ben. It occured to me that the crests on the flying reptiles was to assist in judging shifts in air pressure through sensors in their skin or flesh, similar to those on sharks and rays? Curious centre of balance on this gliding character aye? Well done again.

I was today years old when I found out about Ozimek..

Please talk about Erythrosuchus or Shringasaurus!

Leg wings

The triassic has some cool fauna - Tanystropheus itself make a good video. What were they really up to?

Mother nature was in her methed out teen years when she thought of these

A reversed Wyvern ⏪

Or perhaps they were swimmers, not gliders.

They should dig up the bodies of the Wright Brothers to see how they could fly🤔

What are the odds that a *fifth* order of flying animals will be found? The fossil record is just a sample of what actually lived, it has to be a possibility.

While these arboreal gliders are intrinsically interesting, I have found the evolutionary adaptations of the heaviest known (to date) arboreal dinosaurs to be endlessly fascinating. Mother nature found a way to increase the fitness of these animals by increasing their weight, in rare examples of insular endemic arboreal gigantism. The increased weight was a result of increased bony density with exceptional fatty padding resulting in a globose morphology. In two separate evolutionary lines parallel evolution produced animals that have been artistically rendered in similar manner as overtly spherical animals with short appendages that reduced the danger of injury due to snagging limbs as the creatures plunged through the foliage. These animals apparently evaded predation by flinging themselves away from their tree and plummeting to the ground, plunging through limbs and foliage while protected by thick, short bones surrounded by a dense, protective layer of fat, it is uncertain whether rebound aided or hindered escape from predation. The evolutionary genre is best exemplified by the recently described arboreal pachycephalian heavyweight found by a team of Chapel Hill researchers, headed by Dr. Sue Ellen Peebles, in the triassic sandstones of Maryland's Assateague Island. The team has named the arboreal dinosaur in honor of the recently retired evolutionary biologist Dr. Laurie Lardos and the island the fossils were found, see the description in the August 2023 issue of J. Ev. Bio. "Plunge protective adaptation of Lardassasaurus Laurosii" pp 223-229.

The Lawndartosaurus with center of gravity way forward of the wings?

The Triassic's version of the delta wing fighter.

Corrections: Sharoviptery was an obligate biped. It _might_ have glided. Sharovipteryx was not unique. In analysis Sharovipteryx is transitional between Cosesaurus and Longisquama. These are lepidosaurs and tiny tanystropheids. Huehuecutzpall, Macrocnemus, Langobardisaurus and Tanytrachelos are also members. Those membranes are uropatagia, just as in pterosaurs. Note the robust elongated ilia framing more than four sacrals. These are also basal pterosaur traits, as are the metapodial pedal digit 5, attenuated tail, strap-like scapula and elongate, locked-down coracoid. These are flapping indicators, as in flightless birds. Skin impressions around the neck show aktinofibrils, as in pterosaurs. All of the membranes on Sharovipteryx are plainly visible. I’ve examined the specimen. The images at 10:13 are freehand and largely imaginary. The anterior femur has small semi-circular membranes. None of the freehand images show the disc-like rib cage, almost circular in dorsal view that is actually present. All the freehand images show a traditional cylindrical torso. Why a uropatagium? Sharovipteryx was a biped sprinter. Extra skin helped dissipate body heat. Unlike most lepidosaurs, Sharovipteryx was capable of long-distance sprinting because it had such a short torso and was bipedal. Thus it did not bend laterally, like quadrupedal lizards do during locomotion. That means Sharovipteryx could breathe while running and flapping, which pterosaurs were also capable of. Rotodactylus tracks can be matched to Middle Triassic Cosesaurus and they are sometimes quadrupedal, sometimes bipedal. Distinctly different, Ozimek nests with protorosaurs, but different from them because it is very feeble in its limbs. Likely it was a parasite riding on larger aquatic amphibians, hitching a ride like a remora, waiting for scraps. Note the pelvis is tiny, indicating feeble muscles on the legs. The fifth toe is not metapodial, but short and useless. The pectoral girdle is strong in order to adduct the forelimbs, to hold on tight to its host, without otherwise having to move the feeble forelimbs. The long neck enabled the snatching of food bits, or fecal matter, without having to move otherwise. For more information, go to ResearchGate and keyword Sharovipteryx.

Guys guys Guys Guys listen have the best ide guys listen Ihave the best idea ever guys put WINGS guys wings put WINGS guys listen here put WINGS... on my BACK legs.

Don't we have a gliding lizard in the Amazon, or in Indonesia?🦎

If you want true weirdness, imagine how those animals invented turbo charging next.

🕉️👽

Bat

cool! it could drink 🥃 and fly, right? 💯💯💯🎉

haha, nerds!

What on earth is the creature at 7:58?

L I z a r d

💥🫀💥

I don't normally comment on people's looks, but... why does Ben look like he's wearing the makeup of a 1700s French aristocrat?

As a christian i dont believe these creatures actually existed but these videos are so interesting anyway

People: DRAGONS Scientists: LOL no ignorant pleb those are not a thing People: HERE'S A SKELETON Scientists: ....OH actually we totally already knew about that it's called a "DINOSAUR" People: (eyeroll) (leave) (stop listening) Scientists: SEE THIS IS JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND SCIENCE AND STUFF! People: (keep walking) Scientists: UH THE NERVE of those ignorant, arrogant jerks! It's like they have NO self awareness! I can't even IMAGINE what it must be like to LIVE like that! THE HORROR!

I look forward to plugging "armored reptilian platypus mimic" into DALL-E 2.

I love the reproductions of what they might have looked like in life. Fossilized skeletons in museums are marvelous and awe inspiring; maybe because so many are present in the fossil record. I am guessing that is because their large and heavier bones had a better chance of surviving through the eons it took them to become fossils. But these little wingéd reptiles are beautiful in flight even if it does appear they didn’t fly, but glided. I must as a scientifically ignorant person confess that I don’t understand why all the complicated, Latin like words are used to name and classify them. I am wondering if it is because so many educated people in the 18th and 19th centuries had basic classical educations and so Latin and Greek were familiar to them For all I know there were clubs where they conversed with each other in those languages. I am impressed by your knowledge and ability to pronounce the unpronounceable. (For most of us) But times have changed and it seems they hold to the tradition as a way to be obscure and distinct from posers or the genuinely interested, but confused. As an example when books originally published in a language other than English are translated to other languages, the names of the people in the story are never changed. Personally this is a bad thing. Many years ago I read The Name of the Rose; as most probably know it is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. It’s a good story, translated excellently, except for the names of all the people, all Italian, and there were lots of people and all the names were long and unfamiliar to me. (Maybe to modern Italians, too, but probably not.) So I couldn’t keep them straight as to who was who so I could match them with their characters in the book.So I read the whole engrossing book; I love murder/detective stories. And at the end when the murderer was revealed I stared at the page blankly and I remember thinking, which one was he? because I hadn’t made a name association. Fortunately in a few years a movie was made of the book starring Sean Connery and a very young Christian Slater. I watched the end and when the murderer was revealed I thought, So that’s who did it. The names weren’t updated in the movie, but they were shortened for film, but I saw the people’s faces and knew who was the apothecary and who the head Monk and who the librarian. It was such s relief. So, I suggest to all book translators that they shorten 3 three word names and anglicize them, except for Russians or French people make them something similar, but easier for whatever country it is for. And I say to paleontologists, we all know in your area you are super smart and obviously familiar with the language of your specialty, but really, can’t you morph to more understandable names? I mean, I don’t know who named Tyrannosaurus Rex, but that’s easy. We all know it. Most of us can pronounce it. (I had to look up the spelling.) apparently the T word is not included in spell check. Give us a break. Start using shorter easier names for these guys. You can still have your exclusive private clubs where you can use your imaginations for classifications and such; those don’t mean much to the guy on the street anyway. Sorry so long. I really loved the little reptiles and hope more of them are found. I feel so sorry for the really long necked one and would be interested in a program exploring hypotheses on why that developed. It seems such a liability; and also info on whether or not it had ANY ability to protect itself. ❤