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Oh Metro! Part Whatever...
May. 29th, 2008 12:48 pmSome of you may have seen this paper at PLoS ONE. Its a rather nifty piece of work by Darren Naish and Mark Witton (who's very nice drawings accompany the article itself, and the various newspaper reports.)
Basically a group of pterosaurs called Azdarchids have always been a bit of a problem for palaeontologists working out their lifestyle. They're huge, with 10m wingspans, 2-3m jaws, and "it could look a giraffe in the eye". Originally suggested to be variously scavengers, "dip feeders" (like albatrosses), and mud probers, but they don't have the right sort of beak for any of those. Along with every other bloody pterosaur they've been suggested as a "skim feeder"- but no pterosaur is nearly as specialised as Rhychops the skimmer.
Naish and Witton therefore reconstruct them as stork-like predators. The fossils are mostly found in terrestrial deposits, and their footprints indicate their feet aren't adapted for wading (another popular hypothesis)
Yet again coverage is varied. The best place is of course the paper itself, freely avaliable online. Or you can read Darren's blog about it. I wouldn't bother too much about the rest of the media though.
ETA: The Economist, another short article, and nothing wrong here either. States the research showed that they "were more like giant storks. Rather than skimming the sea, they plucked their prey from the ground." Better than the Sun article, but frankly not that much. Again, shorter seems to be better.
Basically a group of pterosaurs called Azdarchids have always been a bit of a problem for palaeontologists working out their lifestyle. They're huge, with 10m wingspans, 2-3m jaws, and "it could look a giraffe in the eye". Originally suggested to be variously scavengers, "dip feeders" (like albatrosses), and mud probers, but they don't have the right sort of beak for any of those. Along with every other bloody pterosaur they've been suggested as a "skim feeder"- but no pterosaur is nearly as specialised as Rhychops the skimmer.
Naish and Witton therefore reconstruct them as stork-like predators. The fossils are mostly found in terrestrial deposits, and their footprints indicate their feet aren't adapted for wading (another popular hypothesis)
Yet again coverage is varied. The best place is of course the paper itself, freely avaliable online. Or you can read Darren's blog about it. I wouldn't bother too much about the rest of the media though.
ETA: The Economist, another short article, and nothing wrong here either. States the research showed that they "were more like giant storks. Rather than skimming the sea, they plucked their prey from the ground." Better than the Sun article, but frankly not that much. Again, shorter seems to be better.
