Hi, I'm Pterry.
This is Pteresa and that's Pthomas up ahead.
Posted on 11/25/2010 4:47:02 PM PST by decimon
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The pterosaur's wingspan and size have spawned comparisons to dragons. But recently some scientists wondered whether the creature was too big to fly. A pair of papers recently asserted that the biggest pterosaurs may have been too heavy to get off the ground.
That seemed implausible to Habib. After all, the biggest birds often have the longest flight range. And Quetzalcoatlus, with its 35-foot wingspan, certainly fits the bill for gigantic.
So Habib teamed up with Mark Witton, a British paleontologist, to plug in factors like wingspan, weight and aerodynamics into a computer model.
The results, which they presented at a conference last month, were staggering: They revealed an animal that could fly up to 80 miles an hour for 7 to 10 days at altitudes of 15,000 feet. The maximum range, Habib says, was probably between 8,000 and 12,000 miles.
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(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Can’t say a whole lot more ping.
Yeah, but could he launch a Hellfire on the bad guys?
bump
Would need a fairly long runway I’m thinking.
I rather go out to a Hellfire than to one of those things.
Hi, I'm Pterry.
This is Pteresa and that's Pthomas up ahead.
With that mass, you would pull in your wings and free-fall until time to nose up.
Interesting article.
It would be quicker and less painful...
IIRC the Flintstones flew Ptrans-Pterodactyl Airlines
And taste just like chicken at 80 M.P.H.
So, then couldn’t these huge birdosauruses have just flown from the island that Jurassic Park was on to New York? or was that some other era? When the huge leaves off the huge prehistoric trees (that had just been planted for 2 or 3 yrs. from seedlings found in amber) fell onto the scientists visiting the island, that got me off on an incredulous tangent. The rest of the movie was overshadowed by wondering about how those seeds had grown into big trees so fast. Then when the herd of ostrichosauruses were stampeding through the crowd of scientists - making no noise stamping their feet nor trampling anyone - that also made me think it was phony.
There are worse things than death. There are teeth.
Face it, he was. At least in our world, the heaviest creatures which can take off and land go around 25 lbs and those can barely take off or land. The biggest pterosaurs would go around 1000 lbs in our world, and would never get off the ground. In the present age of the world, birds over the sizes of albatrosses and the largest buzzards long since lost their ability to fly and their wings became vestigial.
You have to figure in thermas, updrafts of wind the today’s buzzards take use of.
Buzzards & vultures can take off from level ground with no wind.
If you can only launch from a cliff then the first time you have to land elsewhere, you’re dead. Especially if you are hauling around wings that are useless on the ground.
Pterosaurs never experienced gravity the way that we do at all. That’s the big cosmic dirty secret to the whole deal; Einstein was simply wrong about gravity.
“Peerless Pterosaur Could Fly Long-Distance For Days”
That was then. This is now.
With the TSA around, it probably wouldn’t be flying at all!
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