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To: js1138
The wing loading of your teratorn is well within the range that allows flight. Flapping to take off is certainly the dominant method used by birds, but it is not actually necessary.

Yes it is... but the loading is more consistent with birds that flap their wings to maintain flight... not with the birds that share body morphology with the Teratorn... the soaring birds.

Now put an engine on that wing... one that can keep it flying. One of the other scientific papers I linked on this discussion reported that the energy necessary to keep the Argentavis flying as a soarer, not even as a flapper, was about 600 Watts - but the Teratorn was only capable of producing 130 Watts - and that calculation was based on using a wing loading similar to a modern Condor of about 7 Kg/M2 not the 11.5Kg/M2.

As for not flapping for take off, there is a technical term for birds who have to wait for wind to take off... Lunch.

I’m going to ask again: there are many extinct bird species; do you have any evidence that average or typical wing loading has changed since the age of the dinosaurs? Have you even bothered to consider the question? If not, why not?

I have considered it... and the evidence is that the morphology of the Teratorn is essentially identical with a modern Condor... but scaled up without the necessary physiological changes in musculature and skeleton to support the additional weight.

By the way, the Argentavis magnificens lived and flew and died to extinction a little over six million years ago... nowhere near the time of the dinosaurs. But there is evidence that gravity may have been even more attenuated when dinosaurs roamed the earth...

Take, for example, the Hatzegopteryx thambema, the largest known species of Pterosaur with a wing span that reached 12 - 15 meters (40 - 50 feet). It's skull was nine meters long... Estimated mass was 400 - 500Kg. (880 - 1100 Lbs) with a wing load of 9.1 Kg/M2.


Artist's representation of Hatzegopteryx thambema

It was larger than the Quetzalcoatlus Northropi, with its 8 - 10 meter wingspan, whose mounted skeleton is pictured here:


Quetzalcoatlus Northropi

Any problems getting airborne the Argentavis magnificens would have these creatures would have ... in spades.

241 posted on 04/02/2008 7:09:45 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: Swordmaker

Wing flapping is nice, but it isn’t the only way of getting airborne, particularly in a region with strong prevailing winds.

You have the same approach to reality as all kooks and conspiracy theorists. Any lack of information about history supports theory X, which requires abandonment of all conventional knowledge.

It’s in line with those who can’t imagine how pyramids or Stonehenge could be built with muscle power; therefore they must have been built with alien technology.

You could do some actual research on the engineering requirements, or you could sit on your ass and assert that you are smarter than all the physicists and cosmologists who have ever lived.

Your claims boil down to which propositions are most reasonable and likely:

1. You are smarter that Einstein and Newton and Kelvin. Vast changes in the rotation rate of the earth over short periods of time have no consequenses except to allow for the existence of one or two large animals. No kinetic energy accounting needed.

2. You have made an elementary error in estimating the weight of a complex animal from a bone fragment, and an elementary error in assuming that a bird with standard wing loading is impossible because it couldn’t leap into the air from a standstill.

3. You are correct in ignoring the fact that no class of animal in the fossil record shows evidence of adaptation to varying gravity. Tens of thousands of complete fossils can be ignored because you have one or two magic bone fragments.


243 posted on 04/03/2008 8:34:25 AM PDT by js1138
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