Fossil remains of Pterodactylus have primarily been found in the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria, Germany, which dates from the Late Jurassic period (Tithonian stage), about 150.8 to 148.5 million years ago.

Like all pterosaurs, Pterodactylus had wings formed by a skin and muscle membrane stretching from its elongated fourth finger to its hind limbs.

The first Pterodactylus specimen was described by the Italian scientist Cosimo Alessandro Collini in 1784, based on a fossil skeleton that had been unearthed from the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria.

[9][10] The idea that pterosaurs were aquatic animals persisted among a minority of scientists as late as 1830, when the German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler published a text on "amphibians" which included an illustration of Pterodactylus using its wings as flippers.

Wagler went so far as to classify Pterodactylus, along with other aquatic vertebrates (namely plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and monotremes), in the class Gryphi, between birds and mammals.

Hermann sent Cuvier a letter containing his own interpretation of the specimen (though he had not examined it personally), which he believed to be a mammal, including the first known life restoration of a pterosaur.

Rather, in 1802, following the death of Charles Theodore, it was brought to Munich, where Baron Johann Paul Carl von Moll had obtained a general exemption of confiscation for the Bavarian collections.

[13] Cuvier remarked: "It is not possible to doubt that the long finger served to support a membrane that, by lengthening the anterior extremity of this animal, formed a good wing.

The standard assumptions were that pterosaurs were quadrupedal, clumsy on the ground, furred, warmblooded and had a wing membrane reaching the ankle.

[22] However, these smaller specimens have been shown to represent juveniles of Pterodactylus, as well as its contemporary relatives including Ctenochasma, Germanodactylus, Aurorazhdarcho, Gnathosaurus, and hypothetically Aerodactylus if this genus is truly valid.

The teeth of Pterodactylus also extended farther back into the jaw compared to close relatives, and some were present below the front of the nasoantorbital fenestra, which is the largest opening in the skull.

Solid crests have only been found on large, fully adult specimens of Pterodactylus, indicating that this was a display structure that became larger and more well developed as individuals reached maturity.

[17] Several specimens previously referred to P. antiquus preserved evidence of the soft tissue extensions of these crests, including an "occipital lappet", a flexible, tab-like structure extending from the back of the skull.

[23] The distinct year classes of Pterodactylus antiquus specimens show that this species, like the contemporary Rhamphorhynchus muensteri, likely bred seasonally and grew consistently during its lifetime.

A 2020 study of pterosaur tooth wear supported the hypothesis that Pterodactylus preyed mainly on invertebrates and had a generalist feeding strategy, indicated by a relatively high bite force.

[3] The Solnhofen Limestone is a diverse Lagerstätte that contains a wide range of different creatures, including highly detailed fossilized imprints of soft bodied organisms such as jellyfishes.

Abundant specimens of pterosaurs similar to Pterodactylus were also found within the formation, these include the rhamphorhynchids Rhamphorhynchus and Scaphognathus,[30] several gallodactylids such as Aerodactylus,[23] Ardeadactylus, Aurorazhdarcho and Cycnorhamphus,[7] the ctenochasmatids Ctenochasma[31] and Gnathosaurus, the anurognathid Anurognathus, the germanodactylid Germanodactylus, as well as the basal euctenochasmatian Diopecephalus.

[32] Fossil remains of the dinosaurs Archaeopteryx and Compsognathus were also found within the limestone, these specimens were related to early evolution of feathers, since they were some of the only ones that had them during the Jurassic period.

[34][35] Crocodylomorph specimens were widely distributed within the fossil site, most were assigned to the metriorhynchid genera Cricosaurus, Dakosaurus,[36] Geosaurus and Rhacheosaurus.

[32] Eosipterus yangi Pterodactylus antiquus Diopecephalus kochi Gallodactylidae Ctenochasmatidae Altmuehlopterus ramphastinus Dsungaripteroidea As illustrated below, the results of a different topology are based on a phylogenetic analysis made by Longrich, Martill, and Andres in 2018.

[54] The species R. münsteri was later changed to R. muensteri by Lydekker in 1888, due to the ICZN rule that prohibits non-standard Latin characters, such as ü, in scientific names.

[22] Beginning in 1846, many pterosaur specimens were found near the village of Burham in Kent, England by British paleontologists James Scott Bowerbank and Sir Richard Owen.

[59] Back in 1859, Owen had found remains the front part of a snout in the Cambridge Greensand, and assigned it into the species Pterodactylus segwickii; in honor of Adam Sedgwick, a British geologist.

[58] This conclusion was revised by Rigal et al. in 2017, who disagreed with Hooley's reassignment, and therefore created the genus Serradraco, which afterwards resulted in a new combination called S.

[69][67] Paleontologist Samuel Wendell Williston unearthed the first skull of the pterosaur, and found that the animal was toothless,[67] this made Marsh create the genus Pteranodon (lit.

[17] Another species with a complex history is P. longicollum, named by von Meyer in 1854, based on a large specimen with a long neck and fewer teeth.

However, it was shown by Bennett that the type specimen later designated for Diopecephalus was a fossil belonging to P. kochi, and no longer thought to be separate from Pterodactylus.

[25] An additional review of the specimens published in 2013 demonstrated that some of the supposed differences between P. kochi and P. antiquus were due to measurement errors, further supporting their synonymy.

The informal name "pterodactyl" is sometimes used to refer to any kind of animal belonging to the order Pterosauria, though most of the time to Pterodactylus itself and the distantly-related Pteranodon, the most well-known members of the group.

Christopher Tolkien, the son of the author, described the flying monsters as "Nazgûl-birds"; his father described the appearance of the steeds as somewhat "pterodactylic", and acknowledged that these were obviously "new mythology".