Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: One hundred million years ago, one of the flying creatures that cast a shadow over dinosaurs roaming the Earth was the azhdarchid. Imagine a head like a pelican sort of and an improbably long neck, which should have snapped if the laws of anatomy held. New research out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explains how the creature managed to hold its head up. Cariad Williams is a Ph.D. student in the entomology department there and is the first author of the paper. Welcome to the program.