BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Flying reptiles just got bigger
This entry is for Thomas (the mammal, but also the tyrannosaurus and, recently, the velociraptor). This beautiful picture is from the BBC website in the heading above. Hopefully, they'll let me keep it on the page.
New findings in the Americas (they mention Mexico and Brazil) show that some of these creatures had wingspans of over 18m! Small aeroplanes!
"Their skeletons were exceedingly light: their bones were very thin and hollow, and those hollows were filled with an air-sack system. They'd also got rid of their reptilian scales and their wing membrane was very, very thin.
"All this meant there wasn't that much weight to get off the ground, and so they probably flew really rather well," the researcher said.
4 comments:
The head looks a bit heavy to me though... that will be hollow teeth then? Or a very strong neck? Big long toes for balance? Smaller teeth towards the end of the beak? Very heavy iron balls? Wings attached to the neck? Jepp, this one I go for. I will try to find something more on these "heavy metal heads".
I don't think the image they provided on the BBC site is actually one of the finds they mention in the article. Perhaps these big pterosaurs didn't have teeth. I think don't think Quetzalcoatlus had teeth...will check.
What exactly did you have in mind with heavy iron balls? :-D
Found an image of a Quetzalcoatlus here. Just scroll down half a mile. It's quite a nice the Mesozoic.
err...that should have read something like 'It's quite a nice page on the Mesozoic'. Oh dear...
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