Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Fossils show flying reptiles were 'size of a small aeroplane'
The Daily Telegraph ^ | September 9, 2005 | British Association Festival of Science

Posted on 09/08/2005 7:26:09 PM PDT by aculeus

Giant flying reptiles that soared through the skies in the dinosaur era may have been almost twice as big as previously thought.

Recent discoveries suggest that pterosaurs, the best known of which is the pterodactyl, could have had a wingspan of up to 59ft.

Based on previous fossil finds, paleontologists had estimated the largest pterosaur wingspans to be around 33ft, making it the largest ever animal to fly.

However, bone fragments unearthed in Israel and footprints found in Mexico suggest the largest specimens were substantially larger.

Dr David Martill, from the University of Portsmouth, told the conference: "These were very, very big animals indeed. They were the size of a small aeroplane. Even though they are fragments, they are bloody big fragments.

"Exceptional tissue preservation shows that these animals had a very sophisticated structure."

Footprints discovered in Mexico last year by Professor Dino Frey, of the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, and pterosaur wing finger bones, almost five inches wide, as well as parts of a shoulder girdle have led paleontologists to re-estimate the reptile's wingspan.

The previous largest specimen was the Quetzalcoatlus, discovered by Douglas Lawson in the Big Bend National Park, Texas, in the 1970s.

Pterosaurs lived in the Triassic period with the oldest examples dating back to around 220 million years ago.

Experts are still unsure about the ancestry of pterosaurs. They are currently classified as belonging to a group of reptiles known as archosaurs, which include crocodiles, dinosaurs and birds.

They could fold their joints close to the body at the shoulder and walked a little like bats.

They were previously thought of as gliding animals, but it is now clear they had the ability to flap their wings.


TOPICS: Extended News
KEYWORDS: crevolist
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 121-133 next last

Illustration of a pterosaur
The pterosaur's wingspan was 59ft

1 posted on 09/08/2005 7:26:10 PM PDT by aculeus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: aculeus

And how long ago was that? Creationists?


2 posted on 09/08/2005 7:29:29 PM PDT by luvbach1 (Near the belly of the beast in San Diego)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: aculeus
Man, that thing looks like Nancy Pelosi!!
3 posted on 09/08/2005 7:30:26 PM PDT by msnimje (CNN - Constant Negative Nonsense)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: aculeus

There HAD to be a different gravitational environment when gigantism was rampant. I do not believe that bones muscles and tendons in our current gravity could support animals this big.


4 posted on 09/08/2005 7:30:46 PM PDT by keithtoo (Howard Dean's Democratic Party: Traitors, Haters, and Vacillators)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: aculeus

Sounds like a "flyingnightmareosaurous"


5 posted on 09/08/2005 7:31:18 PM PDT by manwiththehands
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: keithtoo
There HAD to be a different gravitational environment when gigantism was rampant. I do not believe that bones muscles and tendons in our current gravity could support animals this big.
How about an 'atmospheric density' change (e.g., 30% or twice the density that we have now)?
6 posted on 09/08/2005 7:35:51 PM PDT by _Jim (Listening 28.400 MHz USB most every day now ...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: aculeus

Could you imagine of one of those took a crap on your car.


7 posted on 09/08/2005 7:38:17 PM PDT by Husker24
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: msnimje
Whoa! You're right!


8 posted on 09/08/2005 7:38:43 PM PDT by burzum ("Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."--Adm Rickover)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: msnimje; aculeus

It was less menacing than you might think. Gnathosaurs (the variety of pterosaur featured in the picture) were krill and plankton eaters who used their toothy jaws to filter their food from the water, the same way whales use baleen.


9 posted on 09/08/2005 7:47:23 PM PDT by RightWingAtheist (Creationism is not conservative!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: aculeus

This reminds me of one of those curious pieces of info. As a youngster and even through today, I have always been interested in dinosaurs, forteana, mysteries, sasquach, lock ness monster, ufos, etc.

Well, there is a consensus among people who are fans of that type of stuff that there is a photograph, dating at about 1900 give or take a couple of decades. The photo memorializes a story of several cowboys out west (I think the story is Texas) who engaged a flying dinosaur, something like a Pteranodon. They shot it down with their guns and rifles, and killed it.

Anyway, there are many accounts of people seeing the photograph of the cowboys posing in front of a barn with the Pteranodon tacked up, wingspan stretched out. Most are convinced the picture is in some old books, newspapers, or newsletters of odd phenomena and mysteries, yet this photo has never surfaced.

I am very convinced I have seen this photo, and many people have the memory of it, but nobody can find it.

There have been a few theories. One, it's a powerful image that people could have read about (but not seen) and created a very vivid visualization of in their minds in their youth. So the picture doesn't actually exist but many people have basically hypnotized themselves into thinking they have seen it. Wild!

Another theory is that the picture does exist but all records of it in books, libraries, etc have been snarfed by some powerful organization who wants to keep it a secret. This campaign would have to have happened sometime in the 1970s or early 1980s.

Another theory that's really wild is that the picture is an anomaly and that while it was once part of our 'timeline' - that is, the event did happena nd a photo was taken and published in books, etc, but it's evidence of some kind of temporal mishap, and that timecops from the future went back in time and either stopped the event from happening, stopped the picture from being taken, or confistacted all photos/negatives early in its history such that it was 'erased' from our timeline, yet the mind being the amazing thing that it is, those who saw the photograph later in history (say the 1970s) 'remember' it, and when the timecops went back in time and averted the photo being taken, the picture and accounts 'vanished' from future accounts of the story. So the memory of the photo remains, yet the evidence has been erased as the impact of their timecop work rippled through time.

Still another theory suggests that the book in question and the picture is still out there, and while many 1000s of people have seen it, the book/picture/page with the picture is lost for now and may yet resurface.

For the record, I beleive I have seen the picture but can't produce it, like 1000s of others. Anybody have any memories?


10 posted on 09/08/2005 7:47:23 PM PDT by HitmanLV
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: _Jim

One professor would agree:



December 9, 1997

Today's atmosphere would doom dinosaurs

PORTLAND (AP) -- Even without global warming, dinosaurs would overheat and perish in the Earth's atmosphere today and the giant flying pterosaurs would fall out of the sky, an Oregon researcher says.
The Earth's atmosphere may be only one-eighth as dense as it was when dinosaurs flourished, says Oregon State University professor Octave Levenspiel, who presented his theory last month at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers annual meeting in Los Angeles.

Large dinosaurs would die today because of poor heat transfer, he said.

"When creatures become very large, they have more trouble removing heat," said the emeritus professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University. "A denser atmosphere removes heat faster. An atmosphere eight times denser would have allowed the giant dinosaurs to survive."

The giant pterosaurs of 100 million years ago could not fly today because the atmosphere is too thin, he believes. Much less power is needed to fly at greater atmospheric pressures.

"Today's South American condors -- with their 12-foot wingspans and 25-pound weight -- are the largest creatures that can support and propel themselves through the air according to basic aerodynamic principals," he said. "The pterosaur quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of more than 45 feet -- half that of a Boeing 737 -- and weighed more than 150 pounds.

"Either it couldn't fly -- but it did -- or the atmosphere had to be much denser at the time," Levenspiel said.


11 posted on 09/08/2005 7:49:22 PM PDT by MRMEAN (Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress;but I repeat myself. Mark Twain)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: msnimje
Not sure if it flew, but here is another recent fossil find.


12 posted on 09/08/2005 7:56:45 PM PDT by SirChas (I seem to be rapidly approaching the apex of my mediocre career)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

Comment #13 Removed by Moderator

To: HitmanNY

I have seen that pic but have no clue as to where to search for it.


14 posted on 09/08/2005 8:00:01 PM PDT by eastforker (Under Cover FReeper going dark(too much 24))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: luvbach1
It's not nice to poke fun at the supernaturalists.
They can't help it you know.
15 posted on 09/08/2005 8:00:07 PM PDT by ASA Vet (Line the border with trebuchets. Provide the invaders free flights home.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: HitmanNY

If it's out there, it will turn up on eBay sooner or later.


16 posted on 09/08/2005 8:01:08 PM PDT by Age of Reason
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: aculeus
Pterosaurs lived in the Triassic period with the oldest examples dating back to around 220 million years ago.

Yeah, ok, whatever. You might as well be saying 'Once upon a time', with your millions and billions of years.

</Kent Hovind>
17 posted on 09/08/2005 8:02:35 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: PatrickHenry; Ichneumon

some odd stuff in this thread


18 posted on 09/08/2005 8:02:36 PM PDT by King Prout (and the Clinton Legacy continues: like Herpes, it is a gift that keeps on giving.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HitmanNY

another possibility: the photo is a hoax, one of many hoaxes perpetrated by snake-oil salesmen and other such conmen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - remember the Gypsum Giant?


19 posted on 09/08/2005 8:04:31 PM PDT by King Prout (and the Clinton Legacy continues: like Herpes, it is a gift that keeps on giving.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: eastforker

No kidding - that's what we all say. Fortean Times was on the case in the late 1990s but the newsstand in nyc where I would pick it up from time to time stopped getting it.

I am convinced I have seen the photo also. Watch the skies!


20 posted on 09/08/2005 8:06:06 PM PDT by HitmanLV
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 121-133 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson