Bevy Beam, age 11, of Omaha, Neb., for her question

What is a pterodactyl?

He swooped through the air like a giant bat, and his leathery wings were 20 feet wide. You might have mistaken him for a flying dragon, but he was not. The pterodactyl was one of the amazing dinosaurs, and we know that he existed only from his fossil remains left buried in the Earth.There arc no pterodactyls in the world today, and they will never exist again

The story of these strange animals started perhaps 150 million years ago when most of the land animals were dinosaurs. It was the Age of Reptiles. These Amazing lizards came in all shapes and sizes, and some of them took to the air. One of these flying reptiles has been named the pterodactyl  meaning wing Fingers. The bones of his arms and fingers supported the front edge of his leathery Wings. He had a short body; a stubby tail and his bones were hollow like those of Our lightweight birds. His leathery wings were fixed to his sides from shoulder to Ankle. When his story began, the pterodactyl was maybe one foot long. But through the Ages he become bigger and more like a giant bat. At first, he had a lizard=type Head with toothy jaws. Later, he lost his teeth and developed a pointed nose very Much like the beak of a bird. Pterodactyl fossils have been found in many parts of the world. There were at Least 20 different varieties, and the pterodactyl clan Existed for 90 million years. The biggest of these flying lizards had a wingspread of 20 feet. When he took to the air, he must have looked like a dragon. But there were no human beings to be Scared. The last pterodactyl disappeared about 60 million years ago. The pterodactyl was more like a bat than a bird, and the Experts tell us that He was not a true bird. However, he shared his world with the earliest of the early birds. This true bird was also a flying lizard, a feathered lizard called the Archaeopteryx  a named coined from two Greek words meaning ancient and wing. The archaeopteryx and the pterodactyl appeared in the Jurassic period of Earth's History. Much of the Earth was swampland, and the plant life was primitive. The Biggest of dinosaurs ruled the land, and monster serpents inhabited the Seas. The Two flying reptiles disappeared from the scene at the End of the Cretaceous period, with the dawn of the Age of Mammals.