Quetzalcoatlus demonstrates the so-called "quad launch" in this illustration. [Mark Witton]
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 ...
Quetzalcoatlus demonstrates the so-called "quad launch" in this illustration. [Mark Witton]
Dragon-Like, Feathered Dinosaur Was Ace Flyer -- Amanda Fiegl -- National Geographic News -- November 5, 2012 -- Why would a dinosaur with a body built for running have four wings and a long, feathered tail -- and how did it use them? Paleontologists have long puzzled over the dragon-like anatomy of the tiny, carnivorous dinosaur called Microraptor that hunted in the forests of China 130 million years ago. Finally, anatomists think they've found an answer: This crow-size dromaeosaur was a master of control. Whether it was gliding or flapping through the air, its hind wings would have let it turn on a dime. "In terms of aerodynamics, the hind wings would have increased its rate of turn by 33 to 50 percent, compared to using only the front wings," said Michael Habib of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who co-presented the research at an annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Raleigh, North Carolina, last month.
Microraptor's aerodynamic wings are seen in an artist's reconstruction. [Illustration courtesy David Krentz]
bump
my nephew just brought home a really big book of dee-nosaurs, I’m going to take a peek for the Quezo-chezy coated one
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield, for both stories. |
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield, for both stories. |
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Bees can’t fly either.
Bumblebees can’t fly either.
I wonder if they are assuming 14.7 psi as one atmosphere?
I’m also wondering what percentage of the atmosphere and hydrosphere would be permanently blasted into space if you abruptly opened a 120 mile wide crater down to magma at a shallow ocean margin?
Seems to me that would create a superheated seawater steam jet that would rocket into space for days if not weeks.
The net pressure and available atmospheric oxygen before Chicxulub might well have been significantly higher.
I’ve heard that one reason dinosaurs could be of such a large size is that there used to be more oxygen in the atmosphere. I wonder if it is known whether there was also higher surface air pressure.
I fully understand. I have the same problem.
One of the aspects of climbing Mt.Everest is that it requires oxygen tanks. Then, once at the top, climbers look up and wonder how flocks of birds can fly past at that altitude.
How do birds do that, as flying requires so much energy and thus oxygen?
It is because they are descended from dinosaurs, an animal that evolved at the end of the Permian extinction when there had been an oxygen collapse.
Birds, and dinosaurs, have a physiology that traps air inside their bodies.
"I don't unnerstand why this F***ing thing won't fly."
Canadian geese are falling all over my front lawn.
lol
RINO too weak to lift off
And not a single word about the thicker, more dense air that existed during the epochs of the dinosaurs.
Denser air would displace more weight given the same area. It would apply more upward pressure for any wing area and velocity.
I see nothing mentioned that the air was much more dense in the hotter climates when these animals flew.
The analysis appears flawed.
LOL
“And not a single word about the thicker, more dense air that existed during the epochs of the dinosaurs.”
Really? I never heard of this before. That’s pretty interesting.
Apparently peeple fall into that category. They have a physiology that traps air inside their heads.
Maybe it was just windier at the time.
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![Quetzalcoatlus demonstrates the so-called quad launch in this illustration. [Mark Witton]](http://news.discovery.com/animals/2012/11/08/pterodactyl-zoom.jpg)
