Episode 485: Cryodraken’s Very Bad Day
About this episode
This episode discusses the Cryodrakon pterosaur and its fossil record, highlighting a specific individual's unfortunate fate.
Further reading: Rare pterosaur fossil reveals crocodilian bite 76m years ago Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Let’s learn about a type of pterosaur that lived around 75 million years ago in what is now Canada, and we’ll specifically learn about an individual young pterosaur that had a very bad day, a bad day that’s preserved in the fossil record. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, but weren’t actually dinosaurs. Some of them got as big as small airplanes while some were barely the size of chickens. Cryodrakon was one of the biggest ones, with an estimated wingspan of 33 feet, or 10 meters, for an adult animal—maybe even bigger. We don’t know the adults’ size for sure because we only have a few fossils of adult Cryodrakons, and those are incomplete. Mostly we have fossils of young individuals. The older juveniles had a wingspan of around 16 feet, or 5 meters, which is still pretty darn big. Cryodrakon was the first pterosaur discovered in Canada, with fossils found in Alberta in 1972. Since then more fossils have been discovered in the same province, especially in what’s called the Dinosaur Park Formation…
More episodes of Strange Animals Podcast
- Episode 488: The Java Tiger Mystery
- Episode 487: Animals and the Sense of Taste
- Episode 486: Two Rediscovered Birds
- Episode 484: The Sewellel and the Superflea
- Episode 482: Smoky Mountain Mystery Animals
- Episode 481: The Pictish Beast
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