Air-filled bones helped prehistoric reptiles take first flight
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 07:07
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(PhysOrg.com) -- In the Mesozoic Era, 70 million years before birds first conquered the skies, pterosaurs dominated the air with sparrow- to Cessna-sized wingspans. Researchers suspected that these extinct reptiles sustained flight through flapping, based on fossil evidence from the wings, but had little understanding of how pterosaurs met the energetic demands of active flight.
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