Flying Reptile The Size of A Small Airplane 264
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a New Zealand Herald article about a pterosaur that has been discovered to have an almost 18 meter wingspan. From the article: "A Spitfire has a wingspan of 11m and has to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Pterosaurs did it on a diet of fish and a superb ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects. There is nothing close to pterosaurs alive today. Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants and we don't know quite what their closest relative was."
What about Quetzlcoatlus? (Score:3, Informative)
I am NOT going to watch quietly Quetzlcoatlus getting buried in oblivion!!1
This story is useless... (Score:3, Informative)
How can you say, hey I found something really cool! And then don't show any one. I mean, really?! Come on!
Speak for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
better compare it to a glider. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:flying prehistoric giants (Score:0, Informative)
As for stories that stimulate the visual imagination, try reading. "Jurassic Park," for example, in the original book has a fine scene in which some of the people get stuck in a gigantic dome containing pterasaurs; the scene, or a variation of it, was recycled for use in one of the later movies of the "Jurassic Park" saga, and it was decent, but I still thought that the books were far better -- precisely because of how they relied on descriptive stimulation of the imagination for effect, and did the job very well indeed. Michael Crichton doesn't hit one out of the park every time at bat, but "Jurassic Park" was a grand slam!
Re:Stupid comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I may be wrong here (Score:2, Informative)
"Pterosaurs are close cousins of the dinosaurs but had a very different look and lifestyle. Their bodies were covered by hair-like structures that arose independently from the hair we know today on mammals,"
Re:I may be wrong here (Score:4, Informative)
They are reptiles, related to dinosaurs but not considered dinosaurs themselves, and have no close relationship to birds.
Birds-related dinosaurs were small theropods (bipedal carnivorous, Tyranosorus Rex and Velociraptor are theropods for example, but not from the line that led to birds)
What about performance? (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on how you define "efficient". TFA doesn't clarify exactly with which version of "Spitfire" they were comparing the Pterosaur, but a Supermarine Spitfire Mk.XIX has a top speed of 740 km/h, maximum weight of 4082 kg on take-off, flying range of 2495 km, reaches up to 13100 meters altitude. All this with a wingspan of just 9.95 meters. I would like to see any living being top those specs.
Re:Stupid comparison (Score:1, Informative)
Read more about them... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Extrapolating to an absurdity. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they've only found fragments of wing bones of these very large ones. But those fragments are exactly like the wing bones of smaller pterosaurs which they already have complete skeletons for, only larger. The statement about legs and knuckles is based on more complete skeletons from smaller specimens.
Re:BREAKING NEWS!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Well i was joking in fact
If you want a real laugh about idiotically stupid dinosaur theories http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2.asp [answersingenesis.org]
a few choice quotes
"creation of the Earth and animals (including the dinosaurs) occurred only thousands of years ago (perhaps only 6000!), not millions of years. Thus, if the Bible is right (and it is!), dinosaurs must have lived within the past thousands of years."
"God therefore commanded him to build a great ship (the Ark) so that all the kinds of land animals (which must have included dinosaurs) and Noah's family could survive on board while the Flood destroyed the entire Earth (Genesis 6:14-20)"
"Creationists, of course, would not be surprised if someone found a living dinosaur"
"In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old."
That whole site is full of comedy gems
Re:Good morning, Professor Falken ... (Score:2, Informative)
Certainly aircraft designed as fighters sometimes carried bombs. The designation fighter-bomber is often applied to such aircraft, which could carry a (usually) small bomb load and then defend themselves in dogfights. But designing aircraft for this purpose usually means that the 'pure' fighter performance will suffer. I do not think that the Spitfire, as a pure fighter, was ever equiped with operational bomb racks (though I would not be suprised to hear that there was some experimentation at some point.
The whole point of the Spitfire, and the reason it represented a great advance, was its thin wing designed with springy spars. This was the key to its superb speed and manoeverability, but this left it really unsuited to mounting bombs. Indeed, it was hard to mount guns in this wing.
The obvious comparisons are with the ME109 and the Hurricane. The ME109 had thin, though stiffer, small wings, giving it similar performance to the Spitfire. The guns (and the undercarriage!) were mounted in the fuselage, with typically just one M/C in each wing. After the BoB, Hitler ordered the ME109s to carry bombs so as to continue the attack on Britain, and this proved to be pretty ineffective.
The Hurricane (which is a much underrated aircraft) is a better example of a multi-purpose fighter-bomber design. Stiff, thick wings were ideal gun and bomb mounts, and the 'Hurribomber' was much used in the ground attack role.
Incidentally, the Wiki does not do justice to the Hurricane's strengths as a fighter. The thick wing meant it did not have the speed or rate of climb needed to chase 109s, but what the British needed in the BoB was a 'defensive' fighter, and the Hurricane was superior to the Spitfire in this regard. It had a better rate of turn than either the Spit or the Me109, was a better gun platform, and crucially could take a huge amount of damage and stay flying. It was responsible for shooting down most of the German aircraft downed during the BoB, though nowadays people associate that battle with the Spitfire alone.
Re:Good morning, Professor Falken ... (Score:2, Informative)
It wasn't until much, much later that the 109G-6 was armed with the MK 108, and even then not all planes had it, as it wasn't ideal against fighter planes. It had a slow muzzle velocity and only 60 rounds could be carried, so even though it could blow up a plane with a single hit (or two), it took a good shot to actually hit a small, fast moving fighter with it. It was intended mainly for bombers. Many other 109s had the MG 151 20mm cannon instead, which was often better against fighters, such as the Spitfire, which at this time at two Hispano 20mm cannons and either four