This cat-sized pterosaur looks like adorable origami

Paleontologists found the fossils of a pterosaur the size of a cat — and it’s not just cute as hell, it’s also an important cue for whether ancient birds outcompeted the smallest flying reptiles. This teensy pterosaur, in fact, is from the late Cretaceous, around 83 to 72 million years ago, a time when the largest pterosaurs were as big as giraffes and small pterosaurs were thought to be mostly extinct.

The small pterosaur, described in a study published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, is one of the very few discovered in North America. It’s a reminder that there’s still so much we don’t know about how diverse pterosaur populations were at the end of the Cretaceous, right before dinosaurs and pterosaurs went extinct.

"...