{"id":121642,"date":"2021-04-16T20:24:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/this-flying-monkeydactyl-is-the-only-known-pterosaur-with-opposed-thumbs"},"modified":"2021-04-16T20:24:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:24:01","slug":"this-flying-monkeydactyl-is-the-only-known-pterosaur-with-opposed-thumbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/this-flying-monkeydactyl-is-the-only-known-pterosaur-with-opposed-thumbs","title":{"rendered":"This Flying \u2018Monkeydactyl\u2019 Is The Only Known Pterosaur With Opposed Thumbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-flying-monkeydactyl-is-the-only-known-pterosaur-with-opposed-thumbs2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A small, flying reptile glides beneath the canopy of an ancient forest, scouring the trees for tasty bugs. She spots a cicada buzzing in the boughs of a ginkgo tree, then swoops down to snatch it up in her beak. The bug flees; the reptile follows, grasping swiftly along the branches with her sharp claws until \u2013 snatch! \u2013 she grabs the bug with her opposable thumbs.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not your typical picture of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/24071-pterodactyl-pteranodon-flying-dinosaurs.html\">pterosaur<\/a> \u2013 those iconic, winged reptiles that lived through most of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/38596-mesozoic-era.html\">Mesozoic era<\/a> (from about 252 million to 66 million years ago).<\/p>\n<p>But according to a new study published April 12 in the journal <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/fulltext\/S0960-9822(21)00369-9#articleInformation\">Current Biology<\/a><\/em>, a newly-described Jurassic pterosaur appears to have lived its life among the trees, hunting, and climbing with the help of its two opposable thumbs \u2013 one on each of its three-fingered hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A small, flying reptile glides beneath the canopy of an ancient forest, scouring the trees for tasty bugs. She spots a cicada buzzing in the boughs of a ginkgo tree, then swoops down to snatch it up in her beak. The bug flees; the reptile follows, grasping swiftly along the branches with her sharp claws [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}