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Nyctosaurus

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For over a hundred years, Nyctosaurus was believed to be a species of Pteranodon. That view changed in 2003, when a new fossil was discovered bearing an enormous, skeletal head crest, three times the length of this pterosaur's snout (and itself punctuated by a smaller, backward-pointing segment of bone). Clearly, paleontologists were dealing with an entirely new genus of pterosaur. The question is, why did Nyctosaurus have this huge head ornament? Some paleontologists think this bone may actually have been the "mast" of an enormous sail of skin, which presumably helped Nyctosaurus fly, float and/or steer over the skies of North and South America. However, some aerodynamically inclined experts doubt that such an enormous structure would have been stable in flight--and in any event, if it gave Nyctosaurus such a huge aerodynamic advantage, other pterosaurs of the Cretaceous period would doubtless have evolved their own sails. More likely, this was a sexually selected characteristic, meaning males (or females) with bigger head crests were more attractive to the opposite sex.