All posts; Tags Include "Functional Morphology"
- April 29, 2009
- 11:28 PM
- 568 views
Albatross vs. Pterosaur
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Today, there was a paper tangentially related to pterosaurs in the open access journal PLoS ONE. A team of investigators wired up albatrosses and petrels with accelerometers, in order to measure the percentage of time these animals spent flapping their wings and soaring. They found two main styles of wing flapping (as inferred from the accelerometer measurements): 1) high frequency flapping during take-off; and 2) low-frequency flapping during soaring. Interestingly, the frequencies scale with b........ Read more »
Sato, K., Sakamoto, K., Watanuki, Y., Takahashi, A., Katsumata, N., Bost, C., & Weimerskirch, H. (2009) Scaling of soaring seabirds and implications for flight abilities of giant pterosaurs. PLoS ONE, 4(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005400
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