'Sexy' pterosaur tail should have been nightmare for flying. How did it work?

Illustration of an early pterosaur flying with its tail vane.

The first pterosaurs took flight during the age of dinosaurs thanks to a sail-like tensioning system, a new study has found.

Early pterosaurs — informally called "pterodactyls" — had long tails with thin, leaf-shaped flaps of tissue on the end called vanes. This vane would have compromised their flight if it were floppy and fluttered like a flag, so paleontologists knew it was stiff, but they didn't know how the vane maintained stiffness until now.