Re: Pterosaur wings

["Chris Bennett" <cbennett@bridgeport.edu>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "david peters" <davidrpeters@earthlink.net>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: re: Pterosaur wings


> Didn't Paul Macready already demonstrate with a working model that Q.
could fly _without_ the wing adduction that Jim C. is suggesting? Maybe I'm
way late ...
>

Well, it could fly, but I am not sure it could fly.  By which I mean that it
was demonstrated that it could glide and flap its wings at the same time,
but I am not sure that it was demonstrated that it could maintain and gain
altitude by flapping its wings.  Everytime it flew it was towed up to a good
height before release, and so it may have just been a sailplane that flapped
its wings up and down a little.

Interestingly, its untimely demise was not a result of the wing failure that
Jim Cunningham worries about, but rather neck failure.  I happened to be in
D.C. for its first and only public flight and was just getting ready to take
its picture when the head felloff.  So somewhere I have a slide of the
tumbling body slowly following the plummeting head.

Chris


S. Christopher Bennett, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Basic Sciences
College of Chiropractic
University of Bridgeport
Bridgeport, CT 06601-2449