Dinosaur News: A Behemoth fossil found on the Isle of Wight: "The ultimate aerial giants!" | Science | New



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The size of the creature is at least 20 feet and the species could weigh up to 650lbs. The pterosaurs, which allegedly drove the baby dinosaurs, had fascinated the scientists because they seemed too heavy to take off, but according to The Times, the computerized 3D modeling suggested that they might have used their large leg muscles and wings like catapults. Robert Coram, a professional fossil hunter who discovered the discovery, said, "It was perhaps the largest flying creature ever to live up to this time."

Pterosaurs are a distinct species of dinosaurs.

These animals are thought to be the first retrograde animals to evolve in motorized flight some 228 million years ago. They had an air supremacy for 160 million years.

The pterosaur of the Isle of Wight is known as Hatezgopteryx and would have lived about 125 million years before the Isle of Wight was moved to its present position by continental drift.

Continental drift was a theory developed in the early 1900s by Alfred Wegener.

Wegener hypothesized that the continents would move from one ocean to the other.

The theory of tectonic plate built on this theory and the spread of the seabed later in the 20th century.

The distribution of fossils has been used as evidence of plate tectonics.

Mr. Coram explained, "We think it is one of the first super-pterosaurs.

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Michael Habib, from the University of Southern California, said, "Giants such as Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx were as tall as a giraffe and had a wingspan of more than 10 meters.

"It seems unfathomable that birds of this size can fly.

"Unlike birds that walk and jump through the air using only their hind limbs, pterosaurs walked on all fours."

Mr. Habib explained, "The mathematical modeling indicates that starting from a quadruped position – pushing first with the hind limbs, then with the forelegs – would have provided the giant pterosaurs of the jump power required for take-off.

The pterosaurs were destroyed about 66 million years ago by the same asteroid, which resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs first appeared more than 200 million years ago.

As reported by the BBC, the 19th century saw the first dinosaur fossil discovered at 15 Aldersgate Steet near the Museum of London.

In the early 1840s, anatomist Richard Owen discovered the fossil of William Devonshire Saull's geological collection.

Mr. Owen coined the term dinosaur, thinking that the fossil belonged to a new species, involving species already known to geologists but not classified as dinosaurs.

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