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Flying Reptile The Size of A Small Airplane
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a New Zealand Herald article about a pterosaur that has been discovered to have an almost 18 meter wingspan. From the article: "A Spitfire has a wingspan of 11m and has to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Pterosaurs did it on a diet of fish and a superb ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects. There is nothing close to pterosaurs alive today. Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants and we don't know quite what their closest relative was."
people think they have never been, but once, the skies were full of them...
Right, Petrosaurs had a better fuel efficiency. They also didn't carry bombs over large distances and were likely not attacked by fighter planes.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
welcome our airplane sized reptile overlords
Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants and we don't know quite what their closest relative was
I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that the closest relative to a Pterosaur would be another Pterosaur.
Either that, or a Spitfire.
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A Spitfire has a wingspan of 11m and has to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine," Martill said. "Pterosaurs did it on a diet of fish and a superb ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects.
Muscles are the most efficient actuation devices for small sizes. Mechanical equivalents are either power-hungry, awkward (too large, too small, too limited in the ways they output their power...) or not flexible enough.
Muscles produce powerful, fine-grained motion, with only ridiculous amounts of sugar and oxygen. I'm not sure comparing a big dinosaur with a big airplane means anything, as one is the result of millions of years of evolution, and the other only 50 years.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If I recall correctly, there was a spwan of the pterosauri constantly appearing in the books I read all the time in my early childhood with an estimated wingspan of about 15 to 18 meters, as well.
:-(
I am NOT going to watch quietly Quetzlcoatlus getting buried in oblivion!!1
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YTARY!
Well yes, they might have had a greater wingspan, but they certainly didn't fly mach 1, neither did they weight thousands of kilograms. So the statement that they were able to outperform Rolls Royce engines by fish digestion is plain stupid.
Aerobrake?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...the use of fragments of a fossilized skeleton, while I admit can be useful, seems tenuous at best. Certianly I dislike the idea that such flimsy evidence is used to envision not only an entire animal's musculature, but the fact that it is recordbreaking as well. It has the flavor of pseudoscience, to me (but then of course, I'm not a paleontologist.)
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
Dinosaurs were big.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
...without photographs!
How can you say, hey I found something really cool! And then don't show any one. I mean, really?! Come on!
I'd like to nominate Bea Arthur
Thanks for playing
AC
Quetzalcoatlus
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants and we don't know quite what their closest relative was.
That's the worst sentence I've read all day.
Todays gliders made of composites have a wingspan of 18 meters. Actually they vary from 15 to 24 meters, but 18 meter is a standard class. Optimal speed is usually around 90 km/h and minimum speed is around 70 km/h. Of course a glider is built to carry a payload of about 100 kg.
Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants and we don't know quite what their closest relative was
My mother in law.
It takes some imagination after looking at bones to reconstruct in the mind or a drawing a bird that large. I guess a bird that would be floating on high and the bird could swoop over the water and grab fish. It is too bad that there are not some of those old adventure stories on radio that people especially young adults could learn to use their imagination. Visualizing these huge birds flying around or maybe soaring around would be something to see whether real or in the mind. It too bad there are not some of the old Two Adventure Stories that used have real action but well written that portrayed pictures by the use of words. Oh well have fun.
Being under modern birds at the wrong moment can be bad enough. Can you imagine what being shat upon by one of these would be like?
But dinosaurs are not reptiles , are they ?
I had thought they were most closely related to birds
If I am right then which is it ?
A Dinosaur or a Reptile
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
this clearly contradicts the bible and can't possibly be true
It wouldn't be the first time scientists are confused because animals are more efficient than machines...
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Yes its true that they had large wingspans. But I don't know if a comparison to a Spitfire is quite accurate. I mean, are we sure that pterasaurs were actually able to fly or did they just have advanced gliding abilities? In that case it would be more comparable to an ultralight, or a very large handglider. ;-)
Unity in Diversity
It depends on how you define "efficient". TFA doesn't clarify exactly with which version of "Spitfire" they were comparing the Pterosaur, but a Supermarine Spitfire Mk.XIX has a top speed of 740 km/h, maximum weight of 4082 kg on take-off, flying range of 2495 km, reaches up to 13100 meters altitude. All this with a wingspan of just 9.95 meters. I would like to see any living being top those specs.
I for one welcome our airplane sized extinct reptile overlords
Get your Unix fortune now!
Instead of comparing pterosaurs with powered airplanes, they should compare them with powered gliders, which operate on similar specs. Look here and here for examples.
That would be a person hanging from a 18m span glider on a fish eating diet?
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
You don't need any energy to glide, so you just climb (however slow) some high cliff and wait for someone looking tasty enough to take a walk down there. You only need to take off from land if someone wants to taste you, but with 18 meter wingspan you don't have many natural enemies.
Oblivion? Thanks. You just reminded me of Cliff Racers in Morrowind. (Very pterosaur like)
At the same time, you have awakened the fear that they will appear in Oblivion.
Maybe all members of the pterosaur family were territorial jerks too.
Speaking of Quetzlcoatlus, Dagoth Ur wore an Aztec like mask. Oh the connections!
From the article we read - "Only fragments of wing bones have been discovered", and yet later we read "Pterosaurs could walk on four legs using the "knuckles" of their hands." They did not find any evidence that they even *had* legs yet they make these bold and "authorative" statements that are for the most part based on nothing more than imagination. It's just like in the way distant future someone finding a single spark plug and claiming to be able to describe your complete car that it came from, including the colour of the paint. It's good to dig up these old bones and stuff and try to reconstruct creatures from long ago - providing you have a reasonable percentage of the pieces of the jigsaw, but to make assertions about parts you haven't even remotely got is not very scientific.
And here I was thinking it was sarcasm...
here
Its well known that press releases like this get sent out during the times at which a movie, tv show, or book are to be released.
In previous famouns anounced dinosaur discoveries, the dino's had already been well known among the reasearch community however the public hasnt heard of them so for films like Jurrasic Park 3, they anounced the dinosaur that is bigger than a Trex. Also back a year ago, they also anounced another dinosaur that just so happened to be during the release of a dinosaur mass marketed product (cant remember which though unforuntately)
There was a guy on NPR that explained this marketing strategy, as the expert dinosaur consultant on Jurrasic Park, he said Universal asked him to old back on announcing discoveries publically to coincide with all 3 of the Jurrasic Park films.
That's never stopped the "Bank of Nigeria" from sending me email about lost fortunes from unknown relatives before. Either that or the wife or daughter of the late President Pterosaur will be contacting me shortly.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
One of the two researchers involved is called "Dino Frey". What else to expect than good news about them good old flying reptiles?
Hook for the 1/4 mile launching winch. That's how you launch gliders if you can't afford a tow plane.
The comparison with a spitfire is as dumb as it gets. Why not an F-15 while they're at it?
One comparison that looks just acceptable would be with a glider. With a small helper engine to get it off the ground.
which had 30m span. About.
...or haven't you seen the teeth on those suckers? (-:
Like the T Rex, however, I'd be asking serious questions about how well those teeth were anchored.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'm getting bored of these stories of creatures from long ago. Get to work on a real Jurassic Park already!
The title says "Flying Reptile The Size of A Small Airplane". What's wrong in picking an appropriate and representative headline. The NewZeland Herald title "Flying dinosaur biggest airborne animal" was more apt.
as this.
My city: Barcelona.
? why on earth was it modified down for asking a question ? .We learn by asking questions , you don't try and hide them .
,though it is not a troll as its a genuine belief
Especially since it is moderated in such a cowardly way (Over-rated is immune to M2)
Mod this flame-bait if you please
The people who moderated down the GP are idiots.
...in which case, I'm betting on the 9 tonne, 14m monster recently unearthed by the Peruvians.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A few of the big SuperMarines and so on could easily exceed Mach 1 in a shallow dive, but had this nasty tendency to fly to pieces when they did so.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A Spitfire has a wingspan of 11m and has to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Pterosaurs did it on a diet of fish and a superb ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects. Well, that's retarded. Either the spitfire eats engines or the fish somehow directly provide lift.
Perhaps they did carry bombs of a sort over long distances, after all. In which case, scaling up by volume, each would probably dose you with something like 15 litres of very used fish. And things.
Also, they're being compared to a Spitfire in the article, not a Lancaster.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Your mother in law is obviously proof of the Young Earth Theory of Creation Sciense, which posits that humans and dynosaurs (in this case, pterosaurs) were on the Earth at the same time.
http://www.occultopedia.com/h/harpy.htm
I've got an ex-wife like that. I still have nightmares.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
They didn't really find anything new. Most new discoveries related to dinosaurs come from archaeologists re-mapping the way existing bones were supposedly put together, like when people thought that the Tyrannosaurus Rex had a horn, and then later found out it was a hind claw. The 18 metres come from lining all the bones up in one straight line!
Take off every 'ZIG' !!
Pictures right here...
s /chronology/127mya1.shtml. html
m l
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/dinosaur
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/pterosauria
and are pterosaurs really dinosaurs at all?
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/dinosaur.ht
and the nearest relly would be your pet budgie.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html
And you can even make your own paper pterosaur
http://www.rain.org/~philfear/ptercaddie.html
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
That wasn't a troll!
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
There was a guy on NPR that explained this marketing strategy, as the expert dinosaur consultant on Jurrasic Park, he said Universal asked him to old back on announcing discoveries publically to coincide with all 3 of the Jurrasic Park films.
Well there is another one in the works according to IMDB so take that how you will
How much of the flight takes a pterosaur directly toward its destination using air currents, and how often would a pterosaur get to where you want it to go? :P
but seriosuly, can you take a very efficient straight line route using air currents?
... or so they would have you believe.
Can't find examples of evolution? No matter, neither could Dawkins
when I saw it on the Flintstones...
We know they had wings...but how do we know they flew? They could have lost flight when they evolved to be so big.
"Indeed..."
Makes me glad I put all my faith in science.
"There is nothing close to pterosaurs alive today."
Best news I've heard all day.
--
make install -not war
If you're going to tell me about a massive flying reptile, show me some freaking pictures for Pete's sake!
Wing span of only 1.7 meters. (Of course, I'll assume that we're looking only at planes that carry people. Not that R/C or free-flight planes aren't `real planes' ...)
There's birds alive now with wing spans larger than 1.7 meters :)
And a mouse skeleton is similiar to a hippo skeleton. Wonder how well of an extrapolation job we'd do with just a fragment of hippo leg bone?
It's been known for decades what the most likely closest relative of pterosaurs are.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Homeland Insecurity put them on the federal No Fly list.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I think we're all missing the REAL point of the story here.
"Embryonic pterosaurs".
Is this a hint to some kind of future Human-pterosaur hybrid?
"What happend to just paying for a product without being constantly nibbled to death by Credit Card Ducks?"
They're not the same, this is a common misconception.
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
That is true, except for the komoni dragon, which I do not know when it was named, and can't be fecked to 'pedia it, where did dragons come from?
Perhaps the whole idea is based more on fact.
How soon before bringing back dinosaurs from DNS for films is cheaper and more trilling for audiences than CGI?
hrm.
PETA (nazis) will need to expand some.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
It seems the "pterosaur vs. Spitfire" comparison is in many of the articles discussing this, so I suppose it might come from the initial press release, but it's still pointless. It's even more idiotic in the way it's phrased: A Spitfire has a wingspan of 11m and has to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Well, yes, and if it had a smaller wingspan it would need an even more powerful engine. All other things being equal, you need less power to fly with larger wings, not more.
Not to mention the fact that this supposed 60-foot pterosaur (similar claims were made for Quetzalcoatlus when fragments of it were first found, so some caution is warranted) probably weighed no more than 200 pounds, and perhaps a lot less. Pterosaurs were incredibly light for their size.
If you're going to compare pterosaurs with aircraft, do it with the extremely light, long-winged planes used to set records for human-powered flight.
Does it run Linux?
I need just enough coffee to tide me over 'til I need more.
I get the joke, but gliders look more like a U2 plane (the U2 has been called a glider with jet engines). Pretty fun to fly. I'm still just a student but have stayed up for hours, gained altitude, and done 120 knots. Not bad for no engine. Haven't seen any pilots eating fish, but powdered donuts are strangely popular.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
... of automoton sheep wont like this one bit, since it is impossible, since time only began 3300 years ago.
The story was in the BBC several days ago
a superb ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects
so THAT is what I have been seeing up in the sky with the lights and wierd shapes. Those neon lights on the underside of this creature have had everyone confused, everyone thinks it is a ufo. Can't wait to see one in the daytime, so I can see all the decals that make the bird go faster...after all, if the stickers work for rice-mobiles, shouldn't it work for dinosaurs?
Somebody oughta alert Art Bell to this!
Yes, but does it run Linu... err oh. A reptile.
On a more serious note, does it seem to any other layman like we're on the verge of major dinosaur discoveries or rather, that we've been wrong about them. This story and the recent "dinosaurs more like birds that reptiles" news tidbit are interesting.
Imagine the pterror that other creatures must have felt when it came winging over the ptreetops. I would be ptrembling in my raptor-skin boots, for sure.
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
I had been worrying that the aliens in my SF novel, with a wingspan of 6 metres on a world with a gravity level of ~0.9g, would be a little too big to fly. But this is good enough evidence to me that they would be able to. :)
People do understand (hopefully) that dinos, including pteros, are not lizards... right? please, someone tell me this fact isn't lost on the masses... they are more closed related to mammals than to reptiles. $self->update( rant => 0 );
Because these fish eating 18m wingspan reptiles were no match for the 24 litre V12 Merlin powered spitfires.
Boy these Kiwi scientists are dumb
Not enough statues large enough to perch on and crap all over.
It was Judge Woodlock, in the US District Court for Massachusetts, with a gavel.
I don't discount the theory of Darwinism and evolution. I think it could well be a/the mechanism by which God prepared the world. Scripture says "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground" (Gen 2:7) and I believe this, but perhaps Neanderthal and Cromagnon man were alpha and beta versions explicitly developed to work out any kinks?
Ditto for dinosaurs. Could these Pterosaurs for example be a kind of test run which was ended by the ice age (and a clean room reengineering created the animal kingdom we know today)?
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Given that planetary gravity was probably not much different, what about the possibility that the atmosphere was significantly larger back then?
What if flight by such a large animal was quite easy, such as if there were 4 or 5 atmospheres of pressure at sea level?
Many people forget that the atmosphere had to be more dense during that period. A proof of higher atmospheric density are the fossil remains of huge insects. An insect's respiration limits their physical size because they have no lungs for respiration. Yet there are huge fossil insects, implying a much denser atmosphere. This thick air allowed for these flying giants to acheive what they could not at the present atmospheric pressure. This higher pressure also allowed for gigantism in other animals. Big animals require huge improvements in circulation and respiration in ourrent atmosphere. Yet this was the deacto standard then. Something big must have blown away much of it, but I rearely see it discussed. That's why bird aren't as big as they could get today too.
I agree. I think that the fossilization process exagerates the size of the original skeleton. ...And I'll keep believing that until I can be bothered to read a book on fossilization. :)
Birds are likely an ofshoot of dinosaurs, but...
Pterosaurs weren't even dinosaurs...They are extinct without descendant....
Can this discussion be a bit more friggin intellectual?
What we want to know is if we cloned them a)could we hunt and shoot them and b)what did they taste like?
Hopefully you're fishing for a "Funny" mod? Next you'll be posting the "fossils are stratified because the heavy animals sunk to the bottom after Noah's flood" article. Whoo hoo!
A representative sample of the hilariously specious logical turns included in those two links:
Yep -- the Bible throws a collection of traits together, and if we can only cram some sort of known critter into the weird-ass description there, somehow it will prove the Bible was right.
The opening two paragraphs of that second link are bad enough -- implying that somehow science has neglected "sea monsters" out of a sense that they'd "prove the Bible" instead of being in line with secular science. What the heck that's about I don't know. I'll put the last 50 years of deep sea science up against the self-reinforcing sophisms of Biblical literalism any day of the week. One of them is about learning the truth, and has produced the most surprising discoveries in biology -- deep sea vent communities relying on chemosynthesis, etcetera. The other is about nothing more than reinforcing the position of those who claim they've got the word of God on their side. It's produced exacly no new information, instead regarding new knowledge as inherently threatening to its worldly power.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Quoting the article, "Pterosaurs could walk on four legs using the "knuckles" of their hands. They flew with the help of an ultra-thin membrane just half a millimetre thick, which was stretched between its neck, tail and wings."
What if they were just huge bats? The description sounds awful bat-like to me.
antipaucity
It took us a really long time, using all kinds of modern computer models and high speed photography, to figure out how exactly a bumblebee flies. So I wouldn't be too concerned that we can't figure out how these things flew from a few fossils and bones left over 65 million years later. The exact way the wing moved, just the right pressures created from the certain flex of the wing, all kinds of unknowns on the exact characteristics of the skin, etc etc. We've got a long way to go and I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet.
But keep the imagination alive! That's what makes all this stuff fun.
J
As the subject says, your figure for oxygen is somewhat off the mark; at the moment, the oxygen makes up about 21% of the atmosphere. I do not comment the density though, as I don't really have idea about it.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
Also, why doesn't Lance Armstrong fly? His max power output is 1100W, not the 100W attributted to humans. Sustained is about 500W or about what a normal horse will produce.
And yet, oddly enough, we can't even power a helicopter by human power... Although admittedly the last projected I saw which looked viable, the pedaller was not a professional cyclist, just an amateur. They had some fairly impressive figures on how much speed and power was required...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
What proof is there that these things could fly and didn't use its wings only to scoop fish out of the water?
The atmosphere at the time wasn't so useless-for-flying-in as present-day's is: it was oxygen-richer and significantly denser.
Nowadays the biggest bird that can get airborne is a gooneybird/albatross ( or maybe an eagle, as I've never seen a pair of albatross/eagle together. . . ), yet
in water we've got some pretty big "flying" things with very little wing on 'em.
I don't know if the asteroid/comet strike changed the air-composition or stripped some atmosphere off from our world, or both, but it's the explanation that makes sense-est.
( BTW, I think it was NewScientist that covered both those aspects, oxygen & density, separately IIRC, but it's been years, so I'm not certain, and with their "Must Be Subscribed To DeadTrees Edition To Have Archives" rule. . . bah. )
Actually, since the dimensions & approximate-mass of these pterosaurs is known, the atmospheric-density could be calculated by anyone whith the knowledge to do so, straightforwardly, eh?
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