As is well known, all pterodactyls have three small, unguiculate fingers on the radial side of the patagial finger, evidently used in the support of the body, possibly also in prehension and ambulation. In the older forms these fingers were relatively much better developed than in the later ones, the metacarpals of the former, of considerable strength, all articulating with the carpus, whereas in the more specialized forms of later geological age the proximal ends of these bones had become either greatly attenuated or entirely lost. In Nyctosaurus, for instance, the very small anterior metacarpals were not more than one-eighth of the length of the wing-metacarpal, and were in life loosely attached by the soft parts only to the distal part of that bone.