Word: pterosaurs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like birds, which evolved independently 70 million years later, pterosaurs had bones that were hollow and lightweight. (One scientist refers to pterosaur skeletons as "Styrofoam and mailing tubes.") But of all the trademarks of a pterosaur, one of the most peculiar was its hand, which boasted three clawlike fingers of normal size and a fourth digit that was outlandishly long. It was this fourth finger that provided structural support for the wings. Made of a skin-like membrane, the wings were supported by thousands of microscopic fibers that acted rather like the ribs of a folding umbrella, creating a flexible...
Berkeley's Padian, on the other hand, contends that pterosaurs did not have to walk on their wings, but were agile two-legged runners. He also disagrees with the explanation University of Bristol paleontologist David Unwin offers for the long fifth toe that juts out from pterosaur hind limbs. Unwin believes this toe served as the attachment site for a second skinlike membrane that stretched between the animals' hind limbs. "Why else would the fifth toe have been so elongated?" he asks. Padian responds that Unwin's membrane does not make anatomical sense: among other things, it would have hampered...
Endless debate also swirls around the question of how pterosaurs managed to become airborne. Some scientists think the beasts launched themselves from a running start, while others believe they were so clumsy on the ground that they would have had to drop from cliffs or trees to attain a flightlike glide. Lockley, for one, argues that pterosaurs had to be capable of birdlike takeoffs and landings if only because so many pterosaur footprints come from mudflats along the seashore. If they were incapable of flying off after landing in such areas, he says, they would have quickly died...
...Museum of the Rockies on Sept. 15, he will open a new dinosaur / hall in which, risking heresy, there will be nothing scary. An orodromeus scratches its jaw with a hind leg, and a maiasaur sits like a huge, impassive camel. In a corner a pterosaur stands on the ground, looking like an Audubon heron in a fun-house mirror. "I wanted the exhibits to portray animals," says Horner, "not just single events of aggression...
...Lawson found exceeded his wildest hopes: fragments of huge wing bones imbedded in a sandstone outcropping in a remote part of the park. Now, after comparing the bones with the remains of similar creatures found elsewhere, Lawson has announced that they belong to a giant extinct flying reptile, or pterosaur (literally, winged lizard), with a wing span estimated to have been 51 ft. That would make it the largest known flying creature ever to inhabit the earth...