|
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110114/sc_livescience/giraffesizedflyingreptilesnapstogetherinminutes
Working in front of a crowd of visitors, a museum crew pieced together a fossil replica of an ancient flying reptile with a 36-foot wingspan. That's just a few feet shy of the length of an average school bus.
The creature, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, is an anatomical mash-up, with a neck like a giraffe, a beak like a stork and the on-ground gait of - wait for it - a vampire bat. It lived at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. Recent research suggests these winged reptiles, or pterosaurs, may have stalked grassy plains on foot, jabbing at small dinosaur prey with their pointed beaks. They may have shared the agile, spider-like movements of modern-day vampire bats, said David Temple, the associate curator of paleontology at HMNS.
This dinosaur seems like something straight out of a Guillermo Del Toro movie, or a really bad dream. I can picture its tiny head bobbing on that long giraffe neck as it does some weird spider walk across the ground while it pecks at its prey like a bird. I swear nature just gets more and more weird every day.
|
Seems very much like a pterodactyl! (Er, it is one I guess hehe) I never imagined how they walked though, I guess it would be strange! I only imagined them flying through the air. ^^ This one has a huge neck though haha
|
It seemed extremely unlikely to me that an animal with 36-foot wings could actually be flightless, so I looked it up and investigated a bit more.
It looks like pretty much everyone agrees that these things could and did fly quite well, its justs like 1 guy arguing they weighed too much. So basically this article is just inflating some extreme minority opinion to get some attention.
|
On January 19 2011 11:43 sob3k wrote: It seemed extremely unlikely to me that an animal with 36-foot wings could actually be flightless, so I looked it up and investigated a bit more.
It looks like pretty much everyone agrees that these things could and did fly quite well, its justs like 1 gus arguing they weighed too much. So basically this article is just inflating some extreme minority opinion to get some attention.
I agree. It seems far too awkward on the ground to be able to survive without the ability to fly.
|
|
I would honestly love to see a computer re-animation of this dinosaur. It seems like it would be one bad-ass dinosaur.
|
its stuff like this that makes me wonder what the point is. you work hard, you pay your taxes, buy a nice house, marry and start a family, but whatever you do you will never be able to shake the soul-crushing truth that you will never be a 36 foot wide vampire bat dinosaur. why even try
|
To be fair, you also won't get eaten by a 36-foot wide vampire bat dinosaur, so it balances out.
|
On January 19 2011 13:26 Node wrote: To be fair, you also won't get eaten by a 36-foot wide vampire bat dinosaur, so it balances out. No it doesn't...
It really just doesn't.
|
I had a dream I was a 36-foot wide vampire bat dinosaur. Then I woke up and realised none of it was real. I want to die.
|
fuck now i want to be a 36-foot wide vampire bat dinosaur
|
That doesn't necessarily follow...
The largest gliding predators around today are the Andean and Californian Condors, both of which live far from the ocean in mountainous or canyon terrain.
|
On January 19 2011 15:01 sob3k wrote:That doesn't necessarily follow... The largest gliding predators around today are the Andean and Californian Condors, both of which live far from the ocean in mountainous or canyon terrain.
the difference being one only weighs 20lbs and the other weighs 250lbs (upto 500lbs if you read some other estimates). the energy requirements for an active flight lifestyle of such a large animal would be immense...
|
On January 19 2011 11:41 Superiorwolf wrote:Seems very much like a pterodactyl! (Er, it is one I guess hehe) I never imagined how they walked though, I guess it would be strange! I only imagined them flying through the air. ^^ This one has a huge neck though haha
Pterodactyls are a specific species, both this creature and pterodactyls are pterosaurs (not dinosaurs) but they aren't the same creature.
|
|
|
|