Academic

CHAMPION FLIERS: Peerless Pterosaur Could Fly Long-Distance For Days. ?The natural world?s long-di?

By Glenn Reynolds

CHAMPION FLIERS: Peerless Pterosaur Could Fly Long-Distance For Days. “The natural world’s long-distance flight champions are seagoing birds that fly up to 6,000 miles nonstop. But now, two scientists are proposing to give the honor to the pterosaur, a massive creature from the distant past. . . . Habib teamed up with Mark Witton, a British paleontologist, to plug in factors like wingspan, weight and aerodynamics into a computer model. The results, which they presented at a conference last month, were staggering: They revealed an animal that could fly up to 80 miles an hour for 7 to 10 days at altitudes of 15,000 feet. The maximum range, Habib says, was probably between 8,000 and 12,000 miles.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 25, 2010 (boomark / email).