Gaining Ground On Pterosaur Biomechanics: A General Overview

The Pterosauria comprises the Mesozoic flying reptiles whose unique anatomy imposes some challenging constraints to be surpassed when it comes to biomechanical studies, besides having left no modern descendants. Thus, trying to understand its motion dynamics is quite challenging and much relies on technological devices. Here a review on the literature encompassing pterosaur locomotion and general biomechanics is provided. The number of articles per year have increased continuously since 90's. "Evolution" and "Flight" were the most frequent words and usually cited together in scientific production, and the trend topics of the XXI century. Flight was also the trending topic before 2001 and played an important role as expected for volant reptiles. It also suggests that further scientific studies are needed to better understand other biological issues regarding land locomotion, musculoskeletal system, mechanostat, density and properties, neuromechanical aspects, and biomimetics. An increasing integration between paleontology and fields such as engineering, physics, and computational sciences is anticipated-particularly through the use of modeling, 3D simulations, and computer graphics software. This interdisciplinary approach is expected to advance our understanding of the movement dynamics of these flying reptiles, while also enabling the application of their biological principles in the development of bioinspired engineering technologies.