Scientist claims Pterodactyls were too heavy to fly

That's not the picture I posted, is it??

The picture I posted was of hundred-ton stones and there are 200-ton carved stones in the region and, in fact, some of them are at high altitudes. You'd had to have rolled them uphill...

Some of you guys might want to go back and actually read that original article. The Japanese researchers have done a rigorous study of size limits for flying creatures in our present world and they come up with an upper bound of about 80 lbs; real world limits are typically half to two third of that and the biggest flying creatures we actually find are more like 30 lbs.

As to Farmerman's notion of pterosaurs floating around on water and using their wings as sails, there were 100' predators in the waters in those days. Any sort of winged creature floundering around in the water would have been a free meal (or snack) for the day or so that it lasted.

AS you so cleverly dismantled my logic and hypothesis, you can now say youve taken part in a "scientific" debate and dismantled another scientists hypothesis based upon logic and evidence.

Hmmm, ring a bell?

PS a Miocene bird (like a great condor) was Argentavis magnificens it had a 7.5 m wingspan and a weight of about 63 Kg. There goes the "bumblebee" hypothesis of the author. One should post evidence, discuss tests and present conclusions that are derived. I dont think their studiies were quite definitive. Especially since they have form/ function evidence from the fossil record .

The bumblebee hypothesis applies under present conditions. Clearly, conditions at the time of the teratorn were different.

It's from the source you posted. Now you want to claim they aren't the same as the other stones in the vicinity but are similar to ones half way around the world?

So? They still didn't move it an inch and no stone that size has been moved by man anywhere else. Who cares what their plans were, you were implying that the ancients moved it and they did nothing of the sort.



Failed paradigms? You think your example of a stone that never moved is evidence of your idiotic theories on gravity and when your examples are pointed out to be false you want to call it grasping at straws?

When your evidence is debunked, and when you have no evidence to support your assertion of a "failed paradigm" the person grasping at straws is yourself.



Bullshit. They are nowhere near the size of that stone, which would have been the largest stone moved in history if they had actually moved it.

Gunga, in what way were conditions in the Miocene diiferent than todays? You seem to be trying to cadge an argument from ignorance here.
Atmospheric conditions were almost identical to today, as were all metrics of paleomag and gravity. AGU publishes a series of monographs regarding variability and anomalies through geologic time. I defy you to find something significant re: atmospherics or grav/mag that could affect lift/glide.
I think that an 05 article about a 60ft pterodactyl may have been big news at the time. However, by 2008, it appears that most of his colleagues (who actually gave a shit about this) found that the original footprint came from rocks that were almost 45 million years earlier than the manus and radius bones. It turns out that the radius bones were found to be WOOD. Howcome, because there were clearly seen vascular bundles and growth rings indicating annual girth. Bones, especially long bones grow with bone forming nodes in the center and, in the case of the flying reptiles (actually not either reptiles or dinosaurs), they would have been hollow.

Now think about it, no other "bones were found" and the footprints came froom another continent that had broken off from Pangea about 130 million years BP and the "Bone was found in late Maestrichtian time (near the end of K times. Hardly rigorous science.
Im not a rpaleontologist, Im an economic geologist. However, we use paleo as a "Tool". Econ geologists are more sensitive to stratigraphic relationships in "index" fossils because the times are important to us for resource development.
I reject the 60ft pterodactyl story without much better evidence. Id love that more work would be done to bring this area to a conclusion. However, you are easily impressed by "hypotheses".

Im amazed at how you deny the strong evidence in evolutionary synthesis but you buy this kind of stuff with not a question. I think that you, as indicated by EDgar, rely on a much different playbook of "worldview facts" .

See above, about how you buy "facts" at too cheap a price.

Let's walk you through this then. You are trying to argue that gravity was different and you used the following claims as evidence:

1) That modern technology couldn't move stones of that weight.
2) That the ancients did move stones of that weight.

Let's start with number 1. First of all this is just patently false, that stone weighs about 1,000 tons. In 1999 a lighthouse weighing 4,380 tons was moved in one piece.

Here's a picture of it happening:


The technique used to move it is similar to the techniques believed to be used by Egyptians to move much lighter stones.

Now as to the notion that ancient people moved stones of that weight that is also simply not true. As I pointed out to you they did not move that stone at all, it was abandoned while still attached to the base of the quarry.

So what do you do? You call this "grasping at straws" and start bringing up 200-ton stones. There is a world of a difference between those stones and the over 1,000-ton Hajar el Hibla. These aren't "similar".

There is no evidence that humans ever moved a stone of that size in history and you are just plain wrong again.

The stones they did move were feats impressive enough but the notion that it's impossible to do now with all our technology and must have battled less gravity is just plain false. We can and do move much heavier objects now.

Arroagance is not a reasonable substitute for knowing what the fuck you're talking about. In the case of the stone at Baalbek you're asking me to take your word over that of the US Army Corps of Engineers and Bechtel; that's an easy choice and it does not favor you.

In the case of flying creatures the Japanese researchers have made a coercive case for a theoretical limit of around 88 lbs and in the real world bad things start to happen whenever you get to around half of a theoretical limit; thus the heaviest flying creatures we actually observe are around 30 lbs, e.g. albatrosses or the largest berkuts, and those have major difficulties with takeoffs and landings, whence the term "gooney birds" in the case of the albatross.

In the case of land-based creatures, as I've heard it, compensating for the square/cube problem by dividing through by 2/3 power of weight leads to an upper bound for the strongest human athletes of around 20K - 30K lbs, and a total herbivore like a sauropod dinosaur whose body was dominated by the immense digestive system needed to process grass and leaves could not plausibly be stronger on a per-pound basis than a top human weightlifter whose body was almost entirely bone and muscle. Again bad things start to happen before you get to a theoretical max and the largest land animals we actually observe are around 14,000 - 15,000 lbs and that's likely around one percent of elephants.

All of these things say that there is at least reason to suspect a historical increase in gravity at the Earth's surface, for some reason not yet totally understood.

Good thing I know what I'm talking about then.



The bottom line is that humans can and do move much heavier objects than that stone. The claim that humans lack the ability to do so is false.



No, they do not. But if you want to subscribe to junk science theories be my guest.

Remember, for the "preodactyl" on the right, the paleos only had 1 footprint and 2 bones( the long bone of which was actually silicified wood) from a formation that was 2 continents and an ocean apart (post Gandwana) and was from a formation 45 million years younger.

I think that Im being way more skeptical about a reconstructed species than are you. You better rethink how your worldview has disallowed you from dispassionately evaluating evidence about these paleocritters.
Im not aying it aint so Joe, Imsaying that theres not nearly enough evidence to assert that this bigun even existed. Careers in doubt need something to shout about, sort of like "cold fusion" or transmutation of lead.