Here’s a quick short story about the time Pete decided to take a lunch break in one of the pterosaur enclosures at the shop…
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Heavy boots sank into the spongy soil as Pete walked up the riverbank. With a low grunt, he stepped up onto a large, twisted root of a cypress tree, and clambered out onto a gnarled root slope that jutted out over the slow moving water. He sat down slowly, careful not to squish his paper bag as he held onto the thick trunk for balance, and sat with his legs dangling over the dark green water below.
Terry always likes a snack, especially small morsels like snails, grubs, and worms she digs up. That sandwich looks quite tempting though, and she won’t turn her nose up at an opportunity to snatch it out of your hand, so keep an eye and a firm hold on it. 😀 Continue reading
Terry always likes a snack, especially small morsels like snails, grubs, and worms she digs up. That sandwich looks quite tempting though, and she won’t turn her nose up at an opportunity to snatch it out of your hand, so keep an eye and a firm hold on it. 😀
She might not look it, but this little pterosaur (not dinosaur), is very good at walking and running around on the ground. She spends a lot of her time poking her sensitive snout in the dirt for all sorts of burrowing creepy crawlies. When she feels one, she nabs it with her tiny teeth and gulps it down. Yum! Continue reading
If you said Pterosaur then clearly you’ve done your homework. If not, don’t feel bad (I’m not pointing fingers), because the sad fact is that most books, movies, toys, and pretty much anything to do with dinosaurs always lump Terry and her many relatives into the same pile.
Terry is a Pterosaur (Don’t mind the P there, it’s confusingly silent), a group of flying reptiles closely related to dinosaurs. To be specific, her wild cousins are Pterodactylus kochi. Pterodactylus is the pterosaur, where we get the name for the whole group. So now you know she’s special. 😀
1. Is that…fur?
Terry, like all pterosaurs, is covered in a fuzzy layer of pycnofibers. They’re made of the same keratinous proteins as our hair and fingernails. But they appear to be hollow inside, which makes them much more like feathers than fur.
I say “appear to be”, because not everyone agrees. Most of the fossils are a bit squashed, and even the 3d fossils can be hard to tell if what fills the space inside was part of the living animal or just more of the fossil (or a part of decomposition after the critter died, but before it fossilized).
Last week we saw the basic structure of a feather. If pycnofibers are indeed hollow, then that could mean that they are similar in structure to feathers.
Terry and her many relatives are related to dinosaurs in the same way that crocs are related to dinosaurs (They are all Archosaurs). A bit like a great aunt.
Since many dinosaurs are known to have feathers of various kinds, it would be pretty significant if pterosaur pycnofibers are determined to be feathers as well.
How significant? More fluffy dinosaurs! It’s possible that the earliest dinosaurs had a coat of fur-like feathers. 🙂
2. Hard Beak or Fuzzy Snout?
Now I’m not quite sure where I first heard of the idea of hard-beaked pterosaurs…I think I remember Petrie from The Land Before Time had a beak. Come to think of it, I guess there are plenty of interpretations with beaky pterosaurs, but I’m not sure how many are based on fossil evidence.
So why does Terry have a soft, fuzzy snout?
The fossils don’t have a beak. In fact, in several beautifully preserved ones we see only soft tissues, complete with a soft crest and that lappet on the back of head. There’s a lovely diagram showing how clear the fossil is over at Mark Witton’s wonderful blog. I’d highly recommend you check it out, because he’s an excellent artist, and an expert on all things pterosaur. 🙂
Terry’s friend on the left is a Rhamphorynchus (that’s a mouthful, sorry, let’s call him…Ron). Some illustrate Ron and his wild relatives with just the toothless tip of his snout with a beak, but I’ve based mine off of Mark Witton’s lovely illustration.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine those crazy teeth with any kind of soft tissue, and that seems to be the argument for a hard beak over the bone.
3. The original pole vaulting masters
Pterosaurs had powerful wings, but their legs weren’t really strong enough to jump up to fly like birds. So does that mean they’re helpless on the ground?
Not at all, look at Terry scamper around!
Pterosaurs were Earth’s first pole vaulting masters. Their powerful wing-arms were strong enough to push their bodies (even the biggest ones) up into the air. Mark Witton proposes that even the largest, giraffe-sized pterosaurs could lift off from the ground. Many could probably take off from the water!
Helpless? I think, not. 🙂 Here’s a quick video so you can see it in action. 🙂
How is it possible?
Unlike birds, pterosaurs have most of their muscle dedicated to their wings. Birds need enough muscle in their legs to jump up before flapping, while pterosaurs pole vault into the air with the same power they use for flying.
So no need to jump off a cliff or wait for warm updrafts of air. 🙂
Quick Question: Ah, the nostalgia of so many movies and documentaries…I must say I still rather like the leathery, cliff-clinging bats in Fantasia (so many great retro-saurs in that one). Are there any pterosaurs from books or movies that have colored how you see these animals? 🙂 I’d love to hear your answer in the comments!
P.S.- You can always hop over the the A&S page to pick out who you want to see next! 🙂
Feathers are keratinous (like our hair or fingernails) structures that grow from the skin, and there are many different forms that serve many different functions. Here’s a video where we can see the basic structure of a feather quite nicely. 🙂
Remember our emu friend a while back? Here’s a closer look at its feathers…
These feathers are like the peacock feather. The shaft, or rachis, branches off into many barbules, but those barbules don’t have the little hooks that ziplock together. Since Emu’s don’t fly or swim much, there’s no need for the streamlined contour feathers flying birds have.
Emus have no problem with staying dry in the rain, because just like any other bird, they spend a good part of their day combing their beaks through their feathers and coating them with oil from a gland near the base of their tails.
Here’s another video, this one about how varied feather shapes can be, and what they can be useful for. It focuses on birds of paradise and their crazy display plumage, but try to think about what it means for other feathered, flightless animals (like feathered dinos), and how they might use feathers. 🙂
Next week, we’ll finally get to see the Art & Science of little Terry. Keeping this post in mind will help keep that one short, because flying reptiles like Terry are rumored to have a fluffy coat of feathers… 😉
Quick Question: What was your favorite out of the wacky feathers displayed by the birds of paradise? Do you think feathered dinosaurs could’ve had similarly weird and wonderful feathers? I’d love to hear your answer in the comments! 😀
Rosie is smaller than your average dinosaur, about the size of a deer. Like a deer, she can be a bit jumpy, and she feels much better if she has friends to keep her company and watch out for troublesome, over-exuberant types like Opie. He’s far too excitable, and that makes her nervous. She’d much rather curl up under the shade of spiky cycad fronds for a little siesta.
Much safer there. And Rosie always wins at hide-and-seek. 😉
If you take the time to give her treats and coax her out of the thicket, then she’ll get to know you rather quickly. Then she’ll be your friend forever, and come running when you call. 🙂 I hope you don’t mind having a second shadow…
Making progress…
I’m working on something super top-secret at the moment. Well, not really super top-secret, since I told my family about it- but anyway, I want to mention it here too.
Since it may be a while before the picture book is finished, I want to work on a smaller, short term project so that you have something sooner.
In short, I want to create a collection of shortstories, mini-comics, illustrations, what-have-you. My question is about what topic to cover…
Please let me know what looks the most interesting in the comments! Thank you for sharing a little of your time with me here on the site, you guys are awesome, and I want to do whatever I can to make your stay better than great. 🙂
Coming Next Week…
Food is the first (and just about only) thing in mind for this gentle giant. 🙂
Share your guess in the comments! He’s one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂
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