Wednesday, May 28, 2008 . 5/28/2008
With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world.
A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land.
Until now, paleontologists 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.
The new findings, detailed this week online in the journal PLoS ONE, don't ground the animals totally.
"In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method," said co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England. "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."
To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed 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 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters) and a height comparable to a giraffe.
Witton and Naish learned that 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.
"All the details of their anatomy, and the environment their fossils are found in, show that they made their living by walking around, reaching down to grab and pick up animals and other prey," Naish said.
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," Witton said.
This is the case with gulls and pelicans (which are considered plunge divers), but azhdarchid's neck, despite potentially reaching nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in length, was super stiff. "Whatever these animals were doing, it had to involve minimal neck action," Witton said.
Their tiny feet also ruled out wading in the water or probing the soft mud for food. "Some of these animals are absolutely enormous," Witton told LiveScience. "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."
The reptile's head also was pretty lengthy, up to 10 feet (3 meters). 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:LiveScience]
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when will this world wake up and stop believing bold faced lies that come out of a scientists butt who thinks they know everything? if you want to know what killed the dinosaurs, do your research from the only source that matters: the bible.
yea ok, i know that struck a bad chord with many of you out there and probably made quite a number of you expell a mocking scoff, but how many lies does the "scientific community" need to spew out before you start realizing they're just making this baloney up?
Giant birds didn't kill the dinosaurs, the great flood back in noah's time did. after the flood happened, the o2 content in the air was drastically reduced from all of the moisture that was removed from the atmosphere. as a result of that event, the breathing airways in the dinosaurs nasal cavity, trachea, and lungs were too thin to suck in that low amount of oxygen (as would be the case if a human today went from sea level up to 30,000 feet and was suddenly expected to be able to breathe easily), and therefore, they all suffocated shorly after.
i look forward to the day when science is based on the facts and scientific PROOF rather than hocus pocus wizardry that conjures up giant dodo birds that eat dinosaurs.
one more note, if you're at all scientifically inclined, watch the movie Expelled. that is all.
You're speechless after reading that, aren't you? Well, so am I. Almost.
No where in the bible does it mention dinosaurs being killed during this non-existent flood (who's making up shit now?). No where in that article did I see anything about those giant reptiles killing off all the dinosaurs. And where did he get the idea that scientists made this creature up? Even further, what the bloody hell is a creationist doing on a website like LiveScience, a place including, oh I dunno, evidence and reality?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go decide whether I want to laugh or cry.