Posted on 11/10/2012 11:58:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv
A new analysis of the largest of pterodactyls suggests they were too big and their muscles too weak to vault into the air and fly. Instead, they were right at the upper limit of animal flight and needed a hill or stiff breeze so they could soar like hang gliders.
The new analysis was done on the enormous pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus from Late Cretaceous rocks of Big Bend, Texas. Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of about 35 feet (10.6 meters), or about the wingspan of a F-16 fighter. It was among the last pterodactyls to look down on dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The new study, presented on Nov. 7 at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Charlotte, N.C., puts the mass of the flying reptile at around 155 pounds (70 kilograms). That's near the upper limit of what flesh and bone can support in flight, according to paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University in Lubbock...
"There's no way this animal could take off from the ground," said Chatterjee of the quad launch, especially of a more massive animal. "There is no way it could fly."
At least not by jumping directly into the air and taking flight, he said. As for the greater weight suggested by others, that doesn't work in his model either. Despite the fact that Quetzalcoatlus was as large as a giraffe, it could not have weighed more than a medium-sized adult human, he said...
Other researchers, however, are sticking to their quad launch hypothesis, partly because they can't see how Quetzalcoatlus could weigh as little as 70 kilograms.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
SunkenCiv, I’m getting your pings 2X on every subject.
Why are you sending to your ping list out twice on each thread? Here you’ve done it on post # 4 and 5.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want ot be off the ping list, but I only need them once!
that is what i was thinking. I doubt they took into account the denser atmosphere back then
what is that?
Only you, dear Fred, only you.
No. It isn’t “only” me. The strength of your virtue “only” adds to my “strength”.
CHRIST IS KING.
So? This universe is God’s Creation. And scientists every day are discovering the ways by which it operates. They are discovering the Lord’s physical laws, put in place by God, that you would prefer they not find.
Am I right?
So? You want to be a soul dead obamanation unworthy of any respect?
YOU. I have that respect FOR YOU. Instilled in me me by people who not “only” had that respect, but DESERVED that respect.
This universe IS Gods creation. Do not be misguided in your efforts or lack of understanding of INFINITY.
I am no dead soul or obamanation.
And I don’t give a damn about respect from you, or anyone else.
God created the Universe and all the physical laws within. What a wonderful and elegant creation it is, too!
Evolution and extinction are a part of God’s universe.
lol XOXO
SunkenCiv, I’m getting your pings 2X on every subject.
I'm not getting your pings anymore...
And then there is this:
The Paradox of Large Dinosaurs
Applying Science to Understanding Large Dinosaurs
http://dinosaurtheory.com/big_dinosaur.html
I just sent a message about that. In fact, given how things are functioning around here, I probably sent it twice. ;’)
Nice! That must be from 1955, they were makin’ Thunderbirds.
That’s amusing, but it’s mythical. :’)
They didn’t have Dinagra.
Maybe it was just windier at the time.:') Not as windy as it is around here.
Thanks for the great comments, all. Thanks PIF for that link. And I think Medved in absentia for all those old topics about how giant critters could function. :’)
There’s been some suggestion that there was a higher CO2 level in the atmosphere (and not just a little higher, orders of magnitude more) in order to A) get funding for research from the “global warming” agenda, and B) try to explain how dinos were found from pole to pole (drifting continents can’t account for it, the former dino ranges weren’t in the temperate or subtropical or tropical zones).
A thicker atmosphere transports heat from here to there more efficiently. The global temperature would be more uniform even in the absence of a greenhouse effect.
With the current atmospheric thickness, sea level temperatures range from ~-140°F to ~140°F, with a global average of about 60°.
Without actually running the numbers (mostly because I don’t have a clue how to do it) I would not be surprised if an atmosphere twice as thick were 20° warmer on the average, and had a range 3 times narrower, 30° to 115°. Very pole-to-pole survivable even for a reptile.
You, of course, can make up your own numbers...
Dinosaurs were too big for Earth’s present gravity. There had to be gravity attenuation of some sort. Ted Holden’s analysis of muscle strength and scaling for muscle mass based on international weight lifting standards establishes that an elephant is at the outer limits of size allowed by biological factors in muscle strength, tendon strength and the hydraulics of blood flow and capillary permeability under pressure. http://bearfabrique.org/History/sauropods/sauropods.html
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