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Description
I was reading 'Gliding Mammals of the World', which might I mention is a top book, and wondered if anybody had made a speculative biology scenario where flying squirrels became properly volant. I'm sure somebody has -- it is after all quite a simple idea -- but nevertheless here is my own vision of it. The styliform cartilage here has been extended and ossified to give a more wingy sort of surface, and the patagia themselves are supposed to be more complex, with muscles, strengthening fibres and so on as with the wing of the pterosaur. The tail is dorsoventrally flattened and made up of unusually stiff hairs, which aids the creature in steering (a bit like the 'distichious' tails of some small gliding mammals today, or the 'fifth wing' of Microraptor) and has an additional sexual display function in some species. I imagined these definitely would have descended from the flying squirrels (Pteromyini, as opposed to the scaly-tailed flying squirrels, or any of the three lineages of gliding possums), but which species specifically I couldn't say. To make a long story short: it is a pterosauresque flying rodent.

Description
I was reading 'Gliding Mammals of the World', which might I mention is a top book, and wondered if anybody had made a speculative biology scenario where flying squirrels became properly volant. I'm sure somebody has -- it is after all quite a simple idea -- but nevertheless here is my own vision of it. The styliform cartilage here has been extended and ossified to give a more wingy sort of surface, and the patagia themselves are supposed to be more complex, with muscles, strengthening fibres and so on as with the wing of the pterosaur. The tail is dorsoventrally flattened and made up of unusually stiff hairs, which aids the creature in steering (a bit like the 'distichious' tails of some small gliding mammals today, or the 'fifth wing' of Microraptor) and has an additional sexual display function in some species. I imagined these definitely would have descended from the flying squirrels (Pteromyini, as opposed to the scaly-tailed flying squirrels, or any of the three lineages of gliding possums), but which species specifically I couldn't say. To make a long story short: it is a pterosauresque flying rodent.