giant prehistoric reptile

[Bravo Zulu]

The pterosaur was a flying reptile as tall as a giraffe and with a 34-foot wingspan that existed 100 million to 65 million years ago.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/#ixzz0bWYOK6NN

[Drunken Irishman]

1. Jesus

[denbot]

2. Polly want a mosasaur?!?

Not one of us would last a minute in their time.

[xfundy]

3. I thought this was another thread about Rush or some other GOPig

[ChairmanAgnostic]

20. my first thought was Condi Rice.

followed shortly by Cheney

[merh]

4. How cool!

Imagine that thing in the Louisiana swamps. :silly:

[KittyWampus]

5. trippy

[Edweird]

6. Wow.

[emmadoggy]

7. OK, that's cool and all, but I have to say,

the scale of that drawing is WAY off. I've seen giraffes in person and no way are they that huge in relation to people. That giraffe looks like he could just bend down and gobble up that dude in a couple of bites.

All that aside though, I would not want to meet up with a pterosaur. Freaky.

[iris27]

10. Yeah, that giraffe is about 1/3 too big.

Average height is 15-16 feet, and if you figure the average guy stands about 6 feet, then it should be less than 3 times the height of the guy...it's easily 4 times his size.

[surrealAmerican]

17. I guess that makes the man about 4 feet tall.

It kind of makes you wonder who drew this.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

8. The link didn't mention pterosaur, it was Charlie handing out presents...

at the Salvation Army center.

Is there another link? Maybe I'll search for it,

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

9. Well, I found this:

http://www.laattorneyvideo.com/nonlegal/pterosaurs/
Someone thinks they may still be living....

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Here:

His research details how pterosaurs, which were as tall as a giraffe with wingspans reaching 34 feet, hoisted their 500 pounds into the air before wing flapping would begin, eventually able to reach 40 mph speeds over long distances.
...
He concluded that the pterosaur had stronger front legs than hind legs. Those front legs actually are folded wings serving double duty. When the pterosaur took flight, it used front and hind limbs to leap high enough into the air to unfold its wings and begin flapping.

He proved what others thought impossible -- that the world's biggest-ever flying animal could take flight from a standing position. The key was his finding that the pterosaur, unlike modern birds, used four legs rather than two to get off the ground. Four legs made a runway unnecessary.

The entire research project began with Dr. Habib's interest in the biological limits of animals, which soon focused on the maximum possible size a flying animal could reach before becoming too large to fly. The largest species of pterosaur, known as the Quetzalcoatlus, captured his interest because it's about 15 times the size of the largest modern avian species.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10002/1025317-53.stm

[clear eye]

22. That taking off using all 4 legs could explain why the wings evolved from the "hands",

actually fingers, rather than the some sort of foreleg webbing. The forelegs were still being used for leaping, and the wings had to be separate folded extensions evolved from forefeet and toes. Fascinating.

Article says it's a "prehistoric reptile", not a dinosaur. Does this lend support to the pre-dinosaurian origin of birds theory, which means dinosaurs are truly extinct?

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Pterosaurs have never been classified as dinosaurs

and they've never been thought of as ancestral to birds (by any mainstream palaeontologist, anyway). Their evolution into winged flight is more like that of bats than birds, anyway - membranes of skin stretched between an elongated skeleton, rather than scales evolving into feathers. So this doesn't alter anything about the theory of the origin of birds.

[clear eye]

26. Thanks.

:hi:

[Maru Kitteh]

11. Ooo oooo oooo. . . .. . I know this one!

[starroute]

12. Go have a look at the Tetrapod Zoology blog (Tet Zoo)

One of my favorites and always with a soft spot for giant pterosaurs. Here's an entry from a couple of years ago with an image that's a variation on the one in the OP.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/09/it_could_look_a_giraffe_in_the.php

Here's another from last year with more image and details.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/05/terrestrial_stalking_azhdarchids.php



Cool stuff.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Looks like they used the same yuppie for scale.

[rockymountaindem]

13. But enough about George W. Bush...

I thought we were talking about dinosaurs.

[sellitman]

15. Big deal

They taste like chicken.

:silly:

[Enthusiast]

18. If fact they

probably did taste a lot like chicken.

[rucky]

16. God has the same sense of humor as Maurice Sendak. n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

19. Small prehistoric reptile:

[SemiCharmedQuark]

23. LOL...

:thumbsup:

[Codeine]

25. Biggest giraffe EVER!

What a completely stupid drawing.