@@jensphiliphohmann1876 You may think that, but because of the extremely efficient muscle structure recently reconstructed by scientists we know that Spinosaurs could in fact lift their weight into the air.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: giant azhdarchids are perfect horror material. Just imagine seeing a giraffe-sized creature galloping towards you and trying to run from it, only for the creature to suddenly start flying after you
Mate, if you have ever read Primitive War, those pterosaurs are terrifying. Took out a whole platoon without being hit and killed a bunch of Karposuchus. Trust me those things wouldn't just be an antagonist they would be terrifying.
It’s worthy to note that pterosaur wings are not the simple leathery membrane as in bats. Their wings are much, much more complex than that, and more akin to biological plane wings than membranes on bones. It was discovered that giant pterosaurs have thick wings which are highly vascular with complex air chambers connected to the bones. The bones themselves contain pneumatic channels which leads to their lungs. Not only that their wings were thicker and much more durable than just simple membranes, they could also adjust the shape and thickness of their wings in order to aid them better during flight. They had by far the most complex and optimized wing morphology and flight technique of all flying vertebrates. That’s why they could afford to evolve such a large size without sacrificing their capability of flight.
Quite interesting, but that was not the only reason. It was touched on in the video, but the key feature of using the same muscle groups for land locomotion and flight makes them scale up in size better then birds.
Bat wings are not just "simple leathery membranes". They are very flexible and full of muscle fibers which gives bats aerial manoeuverability unmatched by birds. Bats have reduced their weight by having very little muscle in the legs. They can't stand, so rest hanging upside down, and launch by flapping then letting go with their feet. The main thing that keeps bats small is probably the mammalian respiratory system that is inferior to the one way system with air sacs in every place possible that works so well for birds, and for dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
@@b.a.erlebacher1139Pterosaurs got really lucky in that they combined the advantages of birds (extremely efficient respiration and weight savings thanks to being heavily pneumatized) and bats (quadrupedal launch, more effective control over flight surface due to wings being composed of thin sheets of muscle, though bats took this even further by also using their finger joints), lacking the disadvantages of either.
In the 80s, Paul MacReady built a 1/2 scale Quetzalcoatlus model and flew it around. The Smithsonian created an IMAX film about it titled "On the Wing" and I recall it being in the Smithsonian collection when I was a kid. National Geographic did several stories about it. Even at half scale it was incredible and beautifully rendered! Sadly it is rarely mentioned today, and the documentary about it isnt even on RU-vid from what I can see. In the 80s this kind of stuff felt really cutting edge... and while computers can model all kinds of details about an animal's behavior, and movies are fun to watch, they lack the physicality of a working model. It would be incredible to actually watch a full scale one flap around! Sigh. Also, great that Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong put a Pterosaur video up today too!
@@20thCenturyMeerkat for some reason YT wont let me respond. Grrr. Thank you! I found it about thirty mins into the second episode called Putting Flesh on Bone. Very cool.
I remember that. If I recall correctly it was when so many were saying that they couldn't have been able to fly. I even remember as a kid being told things like pterosaurs went extinct because they could only take to the air by jumping off cliffs. Utterly ridiculous, of course.
I gotta give props to Prehistoric Planet for getting me interested in Azhdarchids. Such a fascinating group of animals that I’d completely missed out on!
@@GandalfTheTsaaganIf they have had as thin necks as in the pictures, not likely since you wouldn't even go past the throat. Of course getting pecked all the way to the conclusion of your existence is always an option.
I'm 36 and ever since I was 8 years old I've been completely fascinated by these group of animals (pterosaurs). As a kid I used to be so upset they were not used in the old Jurassic Park movies. Their variety, size, weird shape and ability to get off the ground...unbelievable. So underrated though😢
I have a few... Phthiria relativitae (Pronounced Theory o' relativity), a fly, Agra vation (beetle, plenty in that genus), the fly genus Pieza (has Pieza kake, Pieza pi, Pieza rhea, and Pieza dereistans), the beetles named Binburrum zapdos, B. moltres, and B. articuno, the wasp Aha ha, or A. ha, Ba humbugi (snail), Colon forceps (beetle, plenty more in that genus too), Eubetia bigaulae ( pronounced You betcha', by golly, moth), and last one for now, Hakuna matata (wasp)
@@beastmaster0934 only a slightly shorter yet more robust neck, but else it's the same size in anatomy, hatz was the heavier one with more powerful beak
I should be noted that birds took over as big flying things only after pterosaurs went extinct, so bats getting bigger is probably hindered by birds already occupying those ecological niches where they have had much longer time to evolve to bigger sizes and therefore would outcompete big bats, so there is no room for bats to evolve to bigger sizes. Also all the really big ones have been carnivores. Biggest bat is herbivore. I suspect that would need to change in order to it getting bigger. Fruits just are not efficient enough food source for big active flyer. And then you have entirely new set of animals to compete with.
I like the fact that the largest Azhdarchids were toothless Pterasaurs, whilst the largest birds had 'teeth'. Both Archosaurs too, far surpassing mammals or insects in size on the land and in the air. We got the oceans though...unless those pesky Icthyosaurs take that from us haha.
I talked to a palaeontologist who specialised in the early evolution of birds and apparently flight or at least gliding evolved in dinosaurs 4 separate times. (2 of which were powered)
Not "dumb" but "dead": Megapnosaurus ("bid dead lizard") had originally been named _Syntarsus_ which had already been given to a beatle, and _Megapnosaurus_ as a name was supposedly a joke.
I suspect that the Earth’s atmosphere was slightly thicker, the climate was warmer and land being mostly together in one hemisphere led to strong coastal winds meaning that large flying animals could use the winds to fly.
i love that these guys are just like. theyre just dragons. dragons are real and theyre just dinosaurs they dont breathe fire but they could and would Eat You (and probably be ridden?)
I don't understand judging the largest Azdarkids by their wingspans. In science, when we talk about 'largest' creatures, we always mean mass. That's why T-rex is considered larger than Spinosaurus despite Spinosaurs being longer. Therefore, since Hatzegopterix is the heaviest Azdarkid, this means that it is the largest flying animal of all time that we know of thus far.
it is kinda difficult to say because things such as cryodrakon might have been larger than both and the avg weight of hatzeg and quetz is pretty much the same
I love this video, things that fly just take my breath away. I would love to see an Azhdarchid in real life, from a safe distance!!! One small correction, the most recent DNA analysis found that the Teratorns and the rest of the New World Vultures are actually the most basal family of Accipitrimorphae rather than relatives of storks. Dinosaurs science is dinosaur science I guess.
Birds are wicked things. A racing pigeon was clocked at an average of 90 mph ... for over 400 miles? The Peregrine falcon has been clocked at 240 mph. The fastest animal in the world was sitting on my hedge the other day. Wow.
This is going to be an excellent video; I can already tell! I look forward to sitting down and watching the full thing when I get a chance. Edit: I realized the video has accurate subtitling and so was able to watch it right after I left this comment, and I was correct, it was a great video! Very interesting and informative. Thank you to the Ben G Thomas team for having one of the best paleo-education channels out there!
Even ignoring volaticotheres powered flight evolved several times among dinosaurs like Microraptor, Rahonavis and seemingly Caudipteryx (which evolved from flying ancestors). So flight evolved multiple times
Here in Bangkok I often see flying foxes, both small species and larger ones-though not quite as large as the one found in The Philippines. The big ones are truly magnificent to see flying around.
Important to keep in mind that the air pressure was much higher 100M years ago, with estimates ranging from 2x to 4x what it is today. This added density would have made it much, much easier for enormous animals to fly.
Limestone beds make up a huge % of the uppermost layers of the earth's crust. Limestone by weight is 50% oxygen which was removed from the atmosphere. Burning of carbon removes oxygen from air at 3x the mass of carbon oxidized. Currently concentration of oxygen is reported in Wiki to be reducing by 4 ppm per year. This is crazy high but I suggest that the loss of worldwide oxygen after chicxulub impact may have been 50%. Reptiles with inefficient respiration suffocated in hours or days. The precipitation of CO2 as limestone in the ocean caused loss of atmospheric density, pressure and viscosity of air. The atmosphere could no longer support flight by large animals. Animal mass increase by the cube of their size. Their flying surfaces increase only with the square of their size. Thus no more pterosaurs. Wikipedia has estimates of total composition of earth's sedimentary crust and the atmosphere. Since Jurassic Park I have been trying to more accurately quantify the ongoing conversion of oxygen over millions of years - maybe during 2025 I'll get more serious.
Wing cost too many evolutionary points. Once they lose their function they become vestigial, or are transformed into something else. I agree with you. Big flying lizards were not flightless.
Think it was The Budget Museum (wish he would post more!) who mentioned a while back that there is some (flimsy) evidence that there was a third group of animals that may have been at least on the verge of flight. They were mammals, like bats, but an entirely different family - possible a mustelid. Always found it fascinating to think about that. They wouldn't have been much larger than bats, so no competitions for these huge reptiles!
Really, it's more like _bugs_ are the default type of animal. It's simply more efficient to be small and numerous, so of course insects make up the majority of complex animals on land. It's only because of them that larger, more complex and power-hungry animals could form.
Smthn interesting is I have a scifi story from 2009 that basically says in the story that pterosaurs- esp giant pterosaurs- could only get aloft with a midday thermal or headwind. It's amazing how our understanding of these ancient creatures has increased in only about a decade. I look forward to what the future holds
The fact that to me seeing the ancient griffenflys irl would be one of the most terrifying things ever and then he’s like they’d be magnificent creatures to have seen just really puts it into my brain how much more scared of bugs I am than I think
Eyyy! Greetings from the Philippines! We got those gigantic flying foxes here in my place. They eat the ripest of our mangoes. You'll see big fruits that are half eaten on the ground, which is their calling card.
i refused to believe that there's a pterosaur as tall as a giraffe until the release of Walking with Dinosaurs 3D since then, that pterosaur become my favourite
Vertebrate flight arose at least 4 times that we know of. Sharovipterygidae was another, earlier, clade of flying reptile, unrelated to the later flying reptiles like pterosaurids.
Very interesting information. These were the first Transformers, but were natural, living creatures. I say this because they were configured to walk on all fours, on land and do it pretty well, then unfold and take off flying. I figure they were good flyers, also. Great video. Thank you.
For Meganeura and Meganeuropsis both probably had overlapping sizes given that animals tend to have varying sizes depending on the specimen so I wouldn’t bet on one being larger than the other.
Honestly, it's good that there are no dragons on this planet. Imagine this going after you, but in addition to the wings it also has four clawed limbs and can breathe fire.
I wish we could see genuine horror content related to people encountering dinosaurs & other prehistoric creatures. The potential is there for so much quality horror content. There is this one animator on RU-vid that actually makes really good eerie, tense jurassic park type content.
Man, How come we keep losing bones? Every time I learn about anything Historical or prehistorical, there's always some artifact mysteriously going missing.
It fascinates me to no end that excluding insects........you can mimic all the other flyers bones that they use with your own human hand. Those three are distinctly different too.
It should be mentioned that air density was 3 times higher back then allowing for much greater lift and non of them would be able to fly in todays atmosphere. If we still had 3 times the air density we would likely have similar sized birds now as larger wings are more efficient.
There are "theories", but I've searched around and there isn't really any credible evidence for that. Sure, the atmosphere could've been a bit thicker or thinner but not significantly so. I mean where would the extra atmosphere have come from? Sure, you could add a lot of water vapor, but then the Earth would have to be so hot it could barely have any life on it. And it just wasn't that hot in cretaceous. Hasn't been for billions of years. CO2 from volcanos and such don't add anything significant next to the entire atmosphere either, we're still just talking parts per million. Also, can't really compare pterosaurs to birds since they had different morphology and there's nothing like them alive today.
@@mhdfrb9971 There is credible evidence and science papers on Air pressure during the Jurassic. "Atmospheric Pressure at the Time of Dinosaurs" Chemical Engineering Department Oregon State University
@@bugjamsyou could be correct, if i were you i would record your evidence and publish it in an article so it can be reviewed by peers. you know since youre a professional 😏
I could be mistaken, but with the increased oxygen in the atmosphere in the Cretaceous, wouldn’t the air also be denser, meaning comparisons to bird flight aren’t appropriate? Pterosaurs probably could generate lift very quickly, especially launching near sea level.
Arent some if the identified pterosaur "subspecies" just juveniles of bigger ones? What makes it sure they just dont misidentify a juvenile as separate related species?
I believe the wings were actually for cooling down and for attracting fish to the shade of their wings, in order to catch them, which would also explain their long neck to catch fish before they could get away. That's what herons and egrets do, plus their bills are shaped the same as these things.
Never have I stopped a video before in order to hectically go to a wood puzzle site and buy dinosaur skeletons. Well, there's a first time for everything I guess!
@Ben G Thomas I remember watching you guys when you had a small channel, it has been a pleasure watching you grow. I am absolutely loving the long ones. At 50 I am learning so much still, thank you so much. Btw, in October, NASA will finally send the ship to Europa to test for the chemicals which will identify if there are signs of life! It’s about time, it’s been delayed for so many years. Too bad they won’t go to Enceladus but that’s okay because if there are signs of life through chemical readings, regardless of the fact it will be microbial, it’s still life! To find life in our own solar system will be huge, they believe there may be life in many places in our solar system. That means if life has started at least 3 times now (mars) that it wasn’t just a random thing to happen to only us. I know aliens but this should sway a few more people and an amazing discovery. If not, let’s go check Enceladus.
