For most of us, "pterodactyls" are large, vicious and ugly gargoyles with leathery wings and jaws lined with savage teeth, the sort of disreputable brutes we find in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," the "Jurassic Park" franchise — even a recent episode of "Doctor Who."
Such works suggest we should think ourselves lucky that these flying reptiles were confined to the Mesozoic era (250 million to 65 million years ago) and that they aren't alive today to menace mankind.
Of course, the popular understanding of these fossil animals and their world is only a distant echo of reality, a construct of poor scientific communication, melodramatic media and romantic storytellers.