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Flying Reptile The Size of A Small Airplane

Posted by Zonk on from the mind-the-droppings dept.

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."

10 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Personally... by bladernr · · Score: 3, Interesting
    the use of fragments of a fossilized skeleton, while I admit can be useful, seems tenuous at best.

    I thought the same thing. Anyone else ever been to a museum where they found like, a tooth and toenail, and then reconstructed what the entire animal looked like? They talk about mating patterns, herding, sounds they made... I mean, I love a good BS fest like anyone else, but, seriously, does anyone else think they are just sitting around a pub seeing who can make up the most ridiculous "dinosaur sound" and get it published? They probably just record the "dinosaur sounds" their kids make.

    I guess that is the benefit of being in a profession where, if you are careful, you can't really be proven wrong. They must be the ones keep time travel technology under wraps...

    --
    Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
  2. I may be wrong here by FidelCatsro · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:Good morning, Professor Falken ... by ultranova · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Right, Petrosaurs had a better fuel efficiency. They also didn't carry bombs over large distances and were likely not attacked by fighter planes.

    I seem to recall Spitfires being fighter planes themselves, and therefore not carrying any bombs over any distances.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  4. Must be time to promote another Dinosaur Product by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Personally... by Sr.+Zezinho · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since more than 60 kinds of pterosaurs are known even a few fragments of a new species can provide enough information to support an hypothesis about their size. You don't have to be a paleontologist to understand that.

    --
    os trabalhos e os dias: http://zmoreira.net
  6. Re:Personally... by fuzza · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Indeed...

    "...not being a paleontologist, I don't want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's a very strong desire there to exaggerate the importance of those fragments..." - Dr Greg Kirby

    "The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone." - Dr Tim White

    --
    Can't find examples of evolution? No matter, neither could Dawkins
  7. How do we know they flew? by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We know they had wings...but how do we know they flew? They could have lost flight when they evolved to be so big.

    1. Re:How do we know they flew? by tmortn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Old debate regarding petrosaurs. The evidence is far more in favor of a capable flyer than of an awkward at best glider or land bound creature. If you look at flightless birds you find they did not maintain large wings but quickly became almost vestigil. Think Ostritch or Emu... and in their cases the legs grew to compensate for the awkwardness of having largely useless wing limbs.

      In the case of petrosaurs, and this one in particular, it was absolutely domninated by its wings and obviously would have had problems dealing with them on the ground. So they would have been extremely vulnerable on the ground if they lived there... and that dosn't argue well for survival.

      Another issue is the one of material strength. go look up the discussions of modern physiologists with regards to three very serious problems in their eyes with the physiology of Dinosaurs. Petrosaur Wings, T-Rex bipedal status as a Carnivore that had to be quick to catch prey, and the Sauropod Neck. To make a long story short modern, physiology says that current bone and muscle structures could not support these structures. Their knwoledge of what current tissue and bone structures can do and how they work is pretty good. And yet they are not so silly as to simply ignore the record of fossils. But there is a serious problem here in if there was some stronger biological capacity for the dinosaurs that would mean a more fit evolutionary deveolpment lost out to a less fit one. So that gets the evolution camp up in arms. To say the evidence of what these animals were capable of gets the palientologists up in arms. Besides there is really not much arguing that sauropods had gigantic long necks, T-Rex walked on its hind legs and that Petrosaurs Flew. There also is little dispute that moder physiologists understand muscles and bones of current biology to a great degree.

      Yet in the end the knowledge does not add up to a satisfactory conclusion. There the debate sits. One of the funner explinations of how they could all be right has to do with gravity. Namely most of the structural problems acording to modern physiology begins and ends with what is needed to create and support these structures in Earth's gravity. If Earths gravity was not the same then as it is now then that opens the possibility that all camps are correct. But that argument opens up a serious can of worms, to say the least.

      Anyway this find is going to stir up alot of those debates again. Cause the earlier debate about petrosaurs was never really closed. It sort of died down into an armed truce where physiologists simply say that they were primarily gliders... but something this big will have problems according to them even if all id did was try to support its weight... much less attempt to gain the air by flapping its wings. They can't both be right.... or can they? It is a very intresting discussion.

      --
      I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
  8. Re:What about performance? by MdotCpDeltaT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I attended a lecture of Dr. Octave Levenspiel a few years back where he had solved the riddle of how something that big could fly.

    It's called air pressure.

    For anything to fly that is that big, he showed that the air pressure had to be four times what it is today. Here's a link to his paper. It also explains why dinosaurs could have such long necks and not pass out from loss of blood to their brains.

    Great and really interesting paper.

  9. Re:Good morning, Professor Falken ... by Afrosheen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The first iteration of the Spitfire was a complete weakling due to the machine guns mounted in it's wings. This was likely a design compromise due to the unusual wing design. As a result a ton of British pilots got shot down on a regular basis by the almighty Messerschmitt BF 109 with their Rheinmetall MK 108 30MM cannons. This was an actual cannon and was devastating to any plane unlucky enough to get hit by one or two rounds. In addition the Messer had twin 13mm machine guns mounted in the wings. The Spitfire, however, was an equal in all other aspects; size, horsepower, maneuverability (had a tiny edge there). The armor was quite a bit weaker than that of the Messer, another design compromise.

      All in all the Spitfire, minus the weak guns, was a great plane. Any type of fighter is a conglomeration of compromises but the difference between success and failure can be judged by the aspects most affected by compromise. You can have heavily armored but slow, lightly armored but quick, etc. etc. I think the designers of the Spitfire and Messerschmitt did a wonderful job for their era.