We don’t know how pterosaurs evolved powered flight. The most primitive, probable, ancestor of pterosaurs had a bodyplan closer to that of a kangaroo. And the earliest pterosaurs like Preondactylus or Eudimorphodon were already fully capable of flight.
When I read “powered flight” I imagine them with little outboard motors and propellers
Aliens, obviously
Pfft - they’re all over the place!
Why wouldn’t it be gliding -> flapping -> liftoff?
No reason it wouldn’t be. Ground up vs tree down is more about if controlling a jump or a fall comes before the gliding.
Personally I see the researchers who place bat locomotion as most analogous to how pterosaurs would’ve moved, and then further reason that our evidence points more towards bats being tree down (but we’re STILL not sure on that one because everything that flys evolves too fuckin fast) and that would also mean pterosaurs are PROBABLY also a tree down evolutionary path.
Of course, I’m not a scientist with any sort of official opinions, but I also feel like your babies surviving a fall from a canopy by gliding would have more evolutionary weight and result in the super fast adaptation towards flight than controlling jumps.
No evidence if the intermediate species. It makes sense, but without evidence, it’s just conjecture.
And with gaps in fossil record that last for millions of years, who knows whether we will ever figure out the pathway to flight.
