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TOPIC: Giant Pterosaur
Blobrana


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Pterosaur track
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Scientists discover track of soaring prehistoric creature
While hiking a hillside in Denali National Park last July, Steve Hasiotis bent down and picked up a rock. Its curious shape, like a plaster cast of a giant bird track, made him ponder the rock for a second before handing it to Tony Fiorillo. Fiorillo looked at it and confirmed they had found a missing piece of Alaska during the time of the dinosaurs.

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Blobrana


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Pterosaurs
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In the Mesozoic Era, 70 million years before birds first conquered the skies, pterosaurs dominated the air with sparrow- to Cessna-sized wingspans. Researchers suspected that these extinct reptiles sustained flight through flapping, based on fossil evidence from the wings, but had little understanding of how pterosaurs met the energetic demands of active flight.
A new study published today in the journal PLoS ONE by researchers from Ohio University, College of the Holy Cross and the University of Leicester explains how balloon-like air sacs, which extended from the lungs to inside the skeleton of pterosaurs, provided an efficient breathing system for the ancient beasts. The system reduced the density of the body in pterosaurs, which in turn allowed for the evolution of the largest flying vertebrates.

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Blobrana


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Pterosaurs have long suffered an identity crisis. Pop culture heedlessly - and wrongly - lumps these extinct flying lizards in with dinosaurs. Even palaeontologists assumed that because the creatures flew, they were birdlike in many ways, such as using only two legs to take flight.
Now comes what is believed to be first-time evidence that launching some 500 pounds of reptilian heft into flight required pterosaurs to use four limbs: two were ultra-strong wings which, when folded and balanced on a knuckle, served as front "legs" that helped the creature to walk - and leap.

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Blobrana


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Lacusovagus magnificens
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A new fossil species of flying reptile with a wingspan the size of a family car has been uncovered by scientists.
A researcher at the University of Portsmouth has identified the new type of pterosaur, the largest of its kind ever to have been discovered.
It would have flown in the skies above Brazil 115 million years ago.

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Blobrana


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A researcher at the University of Portsmouth has identified a new species of pterosaur, the largest of its kind to ever be found. It represents an entirely new genus of these flying reptiles that ruled the skies 115 million years ago.
The finding is significant because it originated in Brazil and is the only example of the Chaoyangopteridae, a group of toothless pterosaurs, to be found outside China and is the largest one ever discovered.
Mark Witton identified the creature from a partial skull fossil from which he was able to estimate that it would have had a five-metre wingspan bigger than a family car - and would stand over one metre tall at the shoulder.

"Some of the previous examples we have from this family in China are just 60 centimetres long as big as the skull of the new species. Put simply, it dwarfs any chaoyangopterid weve seen before by miles" - Mark Witton.

Witton has christened the new species Lacusovagus, meaning lake wanderer, after the large body of water in which the remains were buried. The findings were published in the journal Palaeontology in November.
He was asked to examine the specimen which had lain in a German museum for several years after its discovery in the Crato Formation of the Araripe Basin in North East Brazil, an area well known for the its fossils and their excellent state of preservation. However, he said that this fossil was preserved in an unusual way, making its interpretation difficult.

"Usually fossils like this are found lying on their sides but this one was lying on the roof of its mouth and had been rather squashed which made even figuring out whether it had teeth difficult. Still, its clear to see that Lacusovagus had an unusually wide skull which has implications for its feeding habits maybe it liked particularly large prey. The remains are very fragmentary, however, so we need more specimens before we can draw any conclusions. The discovery of something like this in Brazil - so far away from its closest relatives in China - demonstrates how little we actually know about the distribution and evolutionary history of this fascinating group of creatures" - Mark Witton.

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Blobrana


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RE: Giant Pterosaur
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Huge, ancient flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago used to stalk their prey on land, rather than snatch them from the air.
Until now, palaeontologists pictured the so-called "winged lizards" or pterosaurs as skim-feeders. In this vision, the creatures would have flown over lakes and oceans grabbing fish from the water's surface, much as gulls do today.

"In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method. They're just using it to get from point A to point B. We think the majority of their lives, when they're feeding and reproducing, that's all being done on the ground rather than in the air" - co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England.

To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analysed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are much larger on average than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the largest azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, weighed about 250 kilograms with a wingspan of more than 10 metres and a height comparable to a giraffe.
Witton and Naish learned more than 50 percent of the azhdarchid fossils had been found inland. Other skeletal features, including long hind limbs and a stiff neck, also didn't fit with a mud-prober or skim-feeder.
A skim-feeder, such as a gull, trawls its lower jaw through the water, eventually smacking into a fish or shrimp and pulling it from the water.

"Regardless of what they hit, the impact force drives the head and neck underneath the body and into the water, thus requiring a hugely flexible neck" - Mark Witton.

This is the case with gulls and pelicans (which are considered plunge divers), but azhdarchid's neck, despite potentially reaching nearly 3 metres in length, was super stiff.

"Whatever these animals were doing, it had to involve minimal neck action" - Mark Witton.

Their tiny feet also ruled out wading in the water or probing the soft mud for food.

"Some of these animals are absolutely enormous. If you go wading out into this soft mud, and you weigh a quarter of a ton, and you've got these dinky little feet, you're going to just sink in" - Mark Witton.

The reptile's head also was pretty lengthy, up to 3 metres. So Witton said an azhdarchid would only have to dip its head part way to the ground, enough for the tip of its jaws to touch down, to hunt and feed on terrestrial prey. Back before they went extinct 65 million years ago during the event that also killed off non-avian dinosaurs, these pterosaurs could lunch on animals ranging from small bird-like Velicoraptors to T. rex babies to amphibians.

Source Xinhuanet

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Blobrana


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Flying reptiles
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A new fossil species of flying reptile with a wingspan of less than 30cm (1ft) has been discovered in China.
The nearly complete articulated skeleton was unearthed in fossil beds from north-eastern China.
The 120-million-year-old reptile had not reached adulthood when it died, but neither was it a hatchling.
Study of the fossil suggests it is one of the smallest pterosaurs known, a team says in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Blobrana


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RE: Giant Pterosaur
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Ancient Flying Reptiles Probably Swooped, Not Skimmed, for Food
It was a nice idea while it lasted.
Researchers who studied pterosaurs, those flying reptiles that lived (and died) with the dinosaurs, thought that some of them might have foraged in a very striking way by flying low across a body of water with their lower jaws slightly submerged to scoop up fish or other food. The idea was based on what appeared to be anatomical similarities between pterosaur fossils and the few existing bird species that feed in this way.

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Blobrana


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Prehistoric flying reptiles
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Scientists at the universities of Portsmouth, Sheffield and Reading have provided a new insight into the lifestyle of a prehistoric flying reptile.
Using new physical and mathematical modelling, researchers have shown that proposals that extinct pterosaurs gathered their food by 'skimming' the surface of the ocean with their beaks are inaccurate.
 Previous studies have suggested that some pterosaurs may have fed like modern-day skimmers, a specialised group of shorebirds, given the scientific name Rynchops.
 These sea birds fly along the surface of lakes and estuaries scooping up small fish and crustaceans with their submerged lower jaw.
 Inferred structural similarities between pterosaur and Rynchops jaws had previously been used to suggest that some pterosaur were anatomically suited for skimming.
 However, new evidence provided by Mark Witton and Dr David Martill from University of Portsmouths School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, together with fellow scientists from the universities of Sheffield and Reading, suggests that the jaw structure of suggested pterosaur skimmers would not have allowed them to feed this way.
 According to the research, the thicker jaws of pterosaurs would make it difficult for them to cut through water the way the extraordinarily slim bills of Rynchops do.
 By combining experiments using life-size models of pterosaur and skimmer jaws with hydrodynamic and aerodynamic modelling, the researchers demonstrated that skimming requires more energy than the giant reptilian fliers were likely able to supply.
 The researchers established that pterosaurs weighing more than one kilogramme would not have been able to skim at all.

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Blobrana


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Mecistotrachelos apeoros
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The fossilised bones of a previously unknown, 220 million-year-old long-necked, gliding reptile may remain forever embedded in stone, but thanks to an industrial-size CT scanner at Penn State's Centre for Quantitative Imaging, the bone structure and behaviour of these small creatures are now known.

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