New Study Reveals How Pterosaurs Evolved Flight-Ready Brain

In a new study, an international team of researchers used high-resolution 3D imaging techniques, including microCT scanning, to reconstruct the brain shapes of more than three dozen species. These included pterosaurs, their close relatives, early dinosaurs and avian precursors, modern crocodiles and birds, and a wide range of Triassic archosaurs.

The oldest known pterosaurs lived approximately 220 million years ago and were already animals capable of powered flight, an ability that later independently evolved among the paravian dinosaurs, a group that includes modern birds and their closest non-avian relatives.

Flight is a complex motor mode that requires physiological adaptation and a dramatic transformation of the body structure, including changes in body proportions, specialized integument, and the acquisition of new neurosensory capabilities.

Although pterosaurs and birds evolved different skeletal and integumentary adaptations for flight, they are thought to share neuroanatomical features associated with aerial locomotion.

“Our results add to the evidence that the enlarged brains observed in modern birds and presumably their prehistoric ancestors were not the driving force behind pterosaurs' ability to fly,” said Dr. Matteo Fabbri, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Our study shows that pterosaurs learned to fly early in their existence and that they had smaller brains, like true flightless dinosaurs.”

To find out whether pterosaurs learned flight differently from birds and bats, scientists studied the evolutionary tree of reptiles to pinpoint the evolution of pterosaur brain shape and size, looking for clues that may have led to the development of flight.

They paid particular attention to the area responsible for vision, the optic lobe, whose growth is believed to be associated with flight ability.

Using CT scans and imaging software that allowed the authors to extract information about the fossils' nervous systems, the researchers focused on the pterosaur's closest relative, the pterosaur. in Ishalerpetspecies of flightless, tree-dwelling species shelf life who lived in Brazil during the Triassic period about 233 million years ago.

“Lagerpetid brains already showed features associated with improved vision, including an enlarged optic lobe, an adaptation that may have later helped their pterosaur relatives take to the skies,” said Dr. Mario Bronzati, a researcher at the University of Tübingen.

“Pterosaurs also had a larger optic lobe,” Dr Fabbri said.

However, there was otherwise very little similarity in the shape and size of the brain between the pterosaur and the flying reptile's closest relative, the lagerpetid.

“The few similarities suggest that flying pterosaurs that evolved shortly after lagerpetid probably acquired the ability to fly during the outbreak,” Dr Fabbri said.

“Essentially, the brains of pterosaurs transformed rapidly, acquiring everything necessary for flight from the very beginning.”

“Instead, modern birds are thought to have learned to fly in stages, more gradually, by inheriting certain features, such as an enlarged cerebrum, cerebellum and optic lobes, from their prehistoric relatives and then adapting them for flight.”

This theory is supported by a 2024 study that found that expansion of the cerebellum is key to bird flight.

The cerebellum, located at the back of the brain, regulates and controls muscle movements, among other activities.

In further studies, the scientists analyzed the brain cavities of fossil crocodilians and early extinct birds and compared them with the brain cavities of pterosaurs.

They determined that the pterosaur's brain had moderately enlarged hemispheres, similar in size to the brains of other dinosaurs, compared to the brain cavities of modern birds.

“The discoveries in southern Brazil have given us remarkable new insights into the origins of large groups of animals such as dinosaurs and pterosaurs,” said Dr. Rodrigo Tempe Müller, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria.

“With each new fossil and study, we are getting a clearer picture of what the early relatives of these groups were like, something that was almost unimaginable just a few years ago.”

“In the future, a better understanding of how the pterosaur brain structure, beyond size and shape, enables flight will be the most important step to better understand the basic biological laws of flight,” Dr Fabbri said.

results appear in the magazine Current biology.

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Mario Bronzati etc.. Neuroanatomical convergence between pterosaurs and non-avian paravians in the evolution of flight. Current biologypublished online November 26, 2025; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.10.086