Pteranodon Facts for Kids
teh-RAN-oh-don · its name means “toothless wing”
🪽 Not a dinosaur: a pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived with them
A flying reptile with a long crest, but not a dinosaur.
- 📏 size: not yet checked wingspan
- ⚖️ weight: not yet checked
- 🕰️ the Cretaceous
- 🍽️ fish
Pteranodon flew over the sea. It was not a dinosaur, but it lived with them. It had no teeth.
Pteranodon was a pterosaur, a flying reptile. Its wings were skin stretched from a very long fourth finger to its legs. It had a toothless beak and a crest sticking back from its head.
Pterosaurs lived at the same time as dinosaurs but were a separate group of reptiles, so Pteranodon was not a dinosaur. Many of its fossils come from Kansas, which was covered by a shallow sea when it lived; it soared over the water and caught fish. Birds came from dinosaurs, not from pterosaurs.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Pteranodon?
Pteranodon: no checked size yet, so there is nothing to draw. We only draw what a source says.
Pteranodon in numbers
| Wingspan | no checked number yet |
|---|---|
| Height at the hips | no checked number yet |
| Weight | no checked number yet |
| When it lived | no checked number yet |
| What it ate | fish |
| Fossils found in | Kansas and other places that were once under a shallow sea in North America |
| What kind | a pterosaur: a flying reptile, not a dinosaur |
Wow!
- It was not a dinosaur: it was a pterosaur.
- Its name means toothless wing.
- Its wing was held up by one very long finger.
🦴 Pteranodon’s bones
Books about Pteranodon, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Pteranodon for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Pteranodon lived, in the Cretaceous. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
🦖 Ride a Ptero in Dino DashThe game’s rare Storm Ptero is a made-up version of this animal.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- Wikidata, Pteranodon (Q245060), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).