Pterosaurs Could Fly!

In response to a number of recent papers suggesting that heavy pterosaurs, such as Quetzalcoatlus, might not be able to fly (Chatterjee and Templin, 2004; Wilkinson, 2008; Sato et al., 2009; Henderson, 2010), a new paper was published last week by Dr. Mark Witton and Dr. Michael Habib stating that they could in fact launch themselves and were capable of flight(Witton and Habib, 2010). Most of the media attention focused on the launch part, even though the idea had been published in the past (Habib, 2008), and even some publications that refered to pterosaurs as dinosaurs (argh) I was glad to see the NPR report on the paper that included a few words with Dr. Habib.

Sources
Chatterjee S., and Templin R.J. (2004) Posture, Locomotion and Palaeoecology of Pterosaurs. Geological Society of America Special Publication 376: 1–64.

Habib M.B. (2008) Comparative evidence for quadrupedal launch in pterosaurs.
Zitteliana B28: 161–168.

Henderson D.M. (2010) Pterosaur body mass estimates from three-dimensional
mathematical slicing. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 30: 768–785.

Sato K., Sakamoto K., Watanuki Y., Takahashi A., Katsumata N., et al. (2009)
Scaling of soaring seabirds and implications for flight abilities of giant
pterosaurs. PLoS ONE 4: e5400.

Wilkinson M.T. (2008) Three dimensional geometry of a pterosaur wing
skeleton, and its implications for aerial and terrestrial locomotion. Zoological
Journal of Linnaean Society 154: 27–69.

Witton MP, Habib MB (2010) On the Size and Flight Diversity of Giant Pterosaurs, the Use of Birds as Pterosaur Analogues and Comments on Pterosaur Flightlessness. PLoS ONE 5(11): e13982. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013982