Pteranodon

Kansas designated Pteranodon longiceps as its official state flying fossil in 2014, the same year it designated a separate state marine fossil. The two designations together reflect the Cretaceous seabed that underlies western Kansas, one of the richest Late Cretaceous fossil deposits in the world.

Pteranodon was a pterosaur, a group of flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs but were not dinosaurs themselves. Pteranodon longiceps had a bony head crest that could grow longer than its skull, making it one of the most recognizable animals in the Cretaceous fossil record.

Pteranodon longiceps was one of the largest flying animals of its time. Male adults had wingspans up to 23 feet and a long, swept-back bony crest on the back of the skull. Despite that size, the whole animal weighed roughly 50 pounds, with hollow bones similar to those of modern birds.

Pteranodon had no teeth. Its name means 'wing without tooth' in Greek, and its long, narrow beak was built for snatching fish from the water surface, much the way a modern pelican or gannet feeds. It likely soared for long distances on thermal air currents over the Cretaceous sea.

Pteranodon went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago, along with the non-avian dinosaurs and the marine reptiles sharing its habitat.

O.C. Marsh named Pteranodon in 1876 from specimens collected in the Kansas chalk during the Bone Wars, the fierce competition between Marsh and E.D. Cope to discover and name new prehistoric species. The Kansas chalk yielded so many Pteranodon specimens that Marsh's Yale expeditions returned to the region repeatedly through the 1870s and 1880s.

By the time Kansas designated Pteranodon as its state flying fossil in 2014, hundreds of specimens had been collected from the state's Niobrara Chalk, making Kansas the single most important source of Pteranodon fossils in the world. The Kansas legislature created the flying fossil and marine fossil categories simultaneously, a distinction unique among U.S. states.

The Niobrara Chalk of western Kansas is the primary source of Pteranodon longiceps fossils anywhere in the world. The chalk formed from the compressed shells of microscopic marine organisms that settled to the bottom of the Western Interior Seaway over millions of years. Logan, Gove, Trego, and Ellis counties have produced the greatest number of specimens.

Monument Rocks in Gove County, a cluster of tall chalk formations rising from the plains, is the most visually striking exposure of the Niobrara Chalk and a recognized National Natural Landmark. Pteranodon bones and shark teeth erode naturally from these formations and the surrounding badlands.

The Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays holds the most significant collection of Kansas Pteranodon material. George F. Sternberg and his family collected extensively from the western Kansas chalk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and their work remains the foundation of the regional collection.