Re: Pterosaur Fur

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Allan Smith writes: 

> While on topic... when studying bat wings it was interesting to note that (most) bats have to remain dormant during the daylight hours due to the fact that exposing the delicate wing membrane to the sun would cause a life-threatening sunburn.

I suspect that nocturnal bats have lost unneeded pigmentation in their wing 
membranes as a result of being nocturnal, rather than having been forced 
into nocturniality (if that's even a word) by the lack of pigment. 

Diurnal bats like flying foxes tend to have very dark wing membrane 
pigmentation, and have no trouble flying about in tropical (or indeed 
sub-tropical) sunlight. They tend to snooze during the hottest parts of the 
day, but they tend to roost in rather open trees (eucalypts don't provide 
much shade with narrow near-vertical leaves) and wrap their wings around 
their bodies. Hence the wing membranes are actually receiving more solar 
radiation than their much hairier bodies beneath. 

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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist              geo cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia             heretichides.soffiles.com
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