Re: Pterosaur take-off movie on the NG site

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, David Peters wrote:
> http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/08/pterosaur-takeoff-.html

Ok, to my mostly untutored eye the thing that struck me was the flipping
of the head on the takeoff. This is very reminiscent of the halteres, or
hand weights, once used in the long jump to gain distance. Here it
would seem to provide a bit of extra lift.

Small illustration of how the halteres were used

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Sports_p008.shtml

And a (mediocre) video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__7m81eLpF8

Granted, the skull was necessarily low weight, but it still had weight and 
was long such that the flip had to provide a boost