Wings

So the birdman has admitted his powered flight was a fake.

Not exactly surprising given basic mechanics and biology.

The whole thing was an art project, and the artist played skillfully with a profound and enduring dream.

The dream of flight is most strikingly expressed in the activity which brings people closest to actual unassisted flight: wingsuited base-jumping. Their achievements are become more astonishing by the year. See, for example, here and here.

The dream is a focus of the Quetzalcoatlus chapter in my book, which will be out in October.

'Alligator breath'

One of the remarkable features of birds is unidirectional breathing: fresh air enters the lungs both when they breathe in and when they breathe out. This means they get twice as much benefit from each cycle as mammals. It is one of the characteristics that allows many of them to be extremely active with small and light lungs (short explanation here).

C. G. Farmer and Kent Sanders report the same system in Alligators and say the observation suggests that this breathing pattern dates back to the basal archosaurs of the Triassic and their descendants, including both dinosaurs and pterosaurs.


Speaking an outsider/know-next-to-nothing, I think it has long been assumed that pterosaurs would only have been capable of flight if they had a unidirectional breathing system. The new site pterosaur.net has a little information about this (under anatomy).

Image of Preondactylus bufarinii by Mark Witton.

Deep time aeronauts

In The Cosmonaut of the Erotic Future, Aaron Schuster is concerned with the history of levitation. A chapter in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings digresses on pterosaurs -- animals as heavy as or heavier than man but that could actually live the human dream of unassisted flight. The last few years, even months, have been a golden age of discovery regarding pterosaurs. This news about their breathing system is just one recent example.



(See Research article, Hoaxful monsters, Tetrapod zoology)

How did giant flying reptiles take off?

When the pterosaurs’ strong wings were folded they created “knuckles” that the animals rested on in four-legged stance which allowed them to take off in a motion akin to leap-frogging. The back legs kicked off first and then the front legs gave a mighty push to propel them into the air. This procedure would negate the need for launching aids that other paleontologists have suggested, like strong winds, a downslope, or a cliff to jump from.

-- or so says Mike Habib

Image: Mark Witton.

Pterosaur care

A Pterosaur Rookery will be the cornerstone of the Creation Science Museum: a world-class pterosaur facility staffed by the top Christian experts in pterosaur care and husbandry (who will be trained at the very same facility, since little is currently known about pterosaur needs).

--the word from Objective Ministries.

P.S. 27 May: if seeking sanity and a reality stranger than fantasy a good place to start is Tetrapod Zoology on Terrestrial stalking azhdarchids [28 May: paper now online at PLoS].

Hatzegopteryx