DinApril Day 23: A dinosaur that looks like an animal that is not a dinosaur (that your father saw).
Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our twenty-third day features a dinosaur that looks like an animal that is not a dinosaur: Phoebastria albatrus! A female short-tailed albatross has caught a Japanese flying squid and is bringing it home to her baby, only to be caught by surprise by the sight of a male Pteranodon longiceps carrying an Enchoteuthis that probably weighs a lot more than he does (and that isn't even the type species). How the pterosaur managed to pick up the stem-octopod, much less fly off with it, will be a riddle for the ages.
My father is one of those people who keeps thinking that Pteranodon is a dinosaur, so comparing it to a bird with a similar ecology made sense for me.
Coloration inspired by the actual animal.
