Scientists are only now starting to recognise the astonishing size reached by pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. New discoveries in the Americas suggest some had wingspans of 18m (60ft). But there was nothing ugly about the way they moved through the air, according to expert Dr David Martill, of the University of Portsmouth. Their ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects would astonish aeroplane designers, he said.
"Pterosaurs were beautifully engineered," he told BBC News. "Their skeletons were exceedingly light: their bones were very thin and hollow, and those hollows were filled with an air-sack system. They'd also got rid of their reptilian scales and their wing membrane was very, very thin. All this meant there wasn't that much weight to get off the ground, and so they probably flew really rather well," the researcher said.
The oldest pterosaur fossils date back 220 million years and scientists have now identified several different forms - some with teeth, some without; and some sporting elaborate head crests. With their membranous wings attached to their legs, there was something bat-like about them, and their long beaks look like some bird species - but scientists stress they have no line to any living creatures. Indeed, there is still great debate about where exactly they should be placed in the evolution of life forms on Earth. Dr Martill told the British Association's Festival of Science in Dublin that new discoveries would help solve this riddle - and perhaps reveal just how big these beasts managed to grow.
Pterosaur trackways recently found in Mexico suggest the animals could achieve a wingspan of 18m. There are also Romanian and Brazilian fossils from creatures that reached 13 or 14m (42-45ft) across. Compare this to today's biggest bird, the wandering albatross, which has a wingspan of about 3.5m (11.5ft).
"One of the reasons they were so big may have been because they just kept on growing," speculated Dr Martill. We get to teenage years and we stop; but if a pterosaur kept on growing then the older it got, the bigger it got. They would be rare as big ones, though, because the older you get, the more chance you have of being eaten or being involved in an accident."
There is evidence from rare fossil eggs containing pterosaur embryos which suggests the creatures could fly soon after hatching. If this was the case, scientists say, it was a remarkable achievement because the wings would have had to have grown from just a few tens of centimetres in length to several metres without interrupting the animals flying capability. "The equivalent of an aircraft engineer trying to convert a Eurofighter into a jumbo jet while it was still flying," enthused Dr Marthill.
I guess that if the Pteranodons make a return in Jurassic Park IV, they'll have to be scaled up a bit!
On the other hand, any bets as to how long it'll take a Creationist to (ab)use this article as "proof" that only God could have engineered Pterosaurs in such a way?
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That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
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Bigger than a WW2 fighter! That is not a bird I would want to meet.
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But what species is this/are these? I'm woefully out of date, but last I heard, Quetzalcoatl was the largest known pterosaur species. Are these Quetzalcoatl fossil, Pteranodon fossils, or something different?
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wautd wrote:I'd like to see an artistic impression with that beast next to a human, building and/or airplane
Here's a site with a picture comparing a Quetzalcoatlus with a car (scroll down). The site is in Chinese, though. This site has a smaller version of the image (scroll down here, too), but has information in English.
18 meters... holy shit... and it flew just fine. Must've had an enormous mouth.
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Hot-damn! It'd be fucking cool to see a flock of those things fly over head, virtually obscuring the sun.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."
Oni Koneko Damien wrote:But what species is this/are these? I'm woefully out of date, but last I heard, Quetzalcoatl was the largest known pterosaur species. Are these Quetzalcoatl fossil, Pteranodon fossils, or something different?
That article was a little short on details. The picture provided looks like an Ornithrocheirus or a closely related species, but they may have just thrown in a picture of a random pterosaur. Notice that they didn't even say what part of the Cretaceous these things were from. The Cretaceous was one long-ass geological period.
Impressive? Absolutely. Scary? Nah. Pterodactyloid pterosaurs of this size were almost exclusively fish/carion eaters.
Didn't most massive flying Pterosaurs occur near the end of the Mesozoic? Birds had already begun to kick them out of the small fast flyer niches, and they were forced to become mostly fish/carrion eaters.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."
wolveraptor wrote:Didn't most massive flying Pterosaurs occur near the end of the Mesozoic? Birds had already begun to kick them out of the small fast flyer niches, and they were forced to become mostly fish/carrion eaters.
That trend pretty much began with the Cretaceous. While the classic pterodactlyoids we usually think about- species like Quetzalcoatlus and Pteranodon lived in the waning MYs of that period; giant gliding pterosaurs like the Ornithrocheirus pictured were very early Cretaceous.
But yes, birds had thoroughly trounced the small, flapping pterosaurs- whose golden age was the Jurassic. It's believed that they were encroaching upon the pterodactyloid's niche at the end. The only thing the pterosaurs could do was get bigger. In North America, at least, the Pterosauria was in sharp decline. Now, whether this was due to the ecological disaster occuring on that continent, or part of a global trend is hard to say. Whether birds or volcanoes were killing off the pterosaurs, a big rock swooped in and made it all a moot point.
Besides the creationists, I'm betting that cryptozoologists will use this as evidence that there are or were 'Thunderbirds' (i.e., hugeass eagles).
Uh, what about Argentavis magnificens who grew to 3.5 m in length and had an 8 m wingspan according to fossils found in Argentina in 1980? Or the humerus found in the Willamette Valley which suggests a Teratorn with a wingspan between 4-5 m? I thought the only arguments regarding these giant birds are:
1. Are they alive today? (not likely)
2. When did they die out?
3. How large did they grow?
4. Were they flightless?
Or have I been corrupted by false information?
They could not have been flightless, due to the obviously airborne structure of their skeleton, and the fact that much larger creatures can very clearly soar.
Still, these birds are bitch-assed pussies compared to what a real thunderbird is supposed to be.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."
