Pteranodon: Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong #6

Chris black SC animation and Max DJ's workshop all requested that I do pterodactyl I don't have a pterodactyl but I have a Pteranodon so we're going to talk about Pteranodon incidentally pterodactyl is not the mane of Pterodactylus the genus so people tend to use pterodactyl to mean any pterosaur and specifically they'll refer to Pteranodon as a pterodactyl especially in America because it's an American dinosaur also it's ten times larger than a pterodactyl so it's clearly better so you could make a case that pterodactyl would refer to any pterosaur science certainly did that for a while there disclaimer it was not a dinosaur it was an ARCA sort which I'm told I've been pronouncing that wrong I keep saying archosaur but it's arcus or which makes complete sense because of the word root I just never thought about it it generally gets lumped in with dinosaurs in the popular consciousness and unlike with you know Dimetrodon or wooly mammoth or whatever it actually makes sense to lump pterosaurs in with Dinosaurs because you know first off they were phylogenetically very close they were arcus ores that were arguably closer to dinosaurs than to crocodiles the current theory is that they were on acid errands they emerged as highly specialized arcus ores during the early to mid Triassic became extremely specialized and very large by the late cretaceous and then died off in the the KT extinction event so they're not dinosaurs but it's they're technically not dinosaurs whereas a lot of creatures that get lumped in there you would be like no that is clearly not a dinosaur close speaking of the KT extinction events that's when a big ol asteroid smashed into Mexico and killed most life on Earth you probably heard about it it's why we're here this toy is extremely inaccurate I'm not sure where to start about telling you what's wrong with it but I could tell you what's right about it it does have an accurate number of fingers and toes it has a well kind of it seems to be lacking winged fingers but it has three normal carpel metacarpals and four toes on each foot its feet are plantigrade which is that they're walking on their heels which is what they did it doesn't have teeth you'll frequently see Pteranodon portrayed with teeth just to make it more fearsome know the name Pteranodon means toothless winged or winged without teeth because they had to work the Tarot in there but this one doesn't have teeth so that's cool well the head is more or less perpendicular to the neck and the body which is also accurate they carried their heads down as opposed to like a straight out you'll see Tran Adhan portrayed with its head straight out like in as dark it or whatever but oh right and it's it's covered in this fur like thing the term is pinko fibers they're they're dense filaments I don't know if they're analogous to the protofeathers that you see in dinosaurs and other arca stars but they're visually similar I also don't know I don't think anyone really know the extent to which Pteranodon would have been covered in these things it would have been useful for a marine creature to have complete coverage but we're just not sure not a lot of soft tissue for Pteranodon in particularly to get into what's wrong with I guess we should start with posture because that's the first thing that strikes me there would be very little reason for Pteranodon to ever strike this particular pose where it's on its hind legs but on the ground with its wings outstretched first off when it was on the ground it was quadrupedal so the Toymaker really can't be excused for giving it a try paddle stance I am I sort of understand giving a theropod a tripod stance because there's sort of a respiratory precedent for that but Pteranodon would be a quadrant better that was on the ground and I suppose you can make the case that oh it's actually supposed to be flying but if it's supposed to be flying why didn't you just make the feet out backwards like it's flying why would you make it able to be stood up at all oh and you might argue that it would strike this pose if it was trying to like take off no Pteranodon all pterosaurs the the current theory based on their biomechanics is that they because they were quadrupeds on the ground they would have launched not with their weak little hind limbs with with their extremely powerful for limbs which is completely different to anything else that's flying around today where they push themselves into the air they actually had something approaching like the the tendon in their wrist was really crazy and it it was almost a catapult or I guess technically would be an honor in each wrist to launch itself into the gear and then bring its arms up and then flap down to get completely airborne and it that's really cool and it's completely not reflected in this toy and you might ask how do I know that they were quadrupedal when they were on the ground aside from the fact that paleontologists told me so we have trackways from this creature and I always get a little excited about footprints but in this case it's cool because initially we thought that these particular track waves were from like Crockett miles but upon further analysis it's a pterosaur walking on its wings and the hands were on the ground but the winged finger was held aloft and then the body would have been almost erect especially for long winged creatures like like Pteranodon and another thing from the trackways is the stride they were not slow on their feet like a lot of portrayals are they could get a decent stride on the ground they weren't exactly graceful but they could move so regarding the scaling of the creature for starters the wings are way too small we're going to transition to into how it would be proportionate of what we're flying by the way because on the ground you don't see the geometry so well but the head is too small also the body is too big and the head is too small so head should be as long as the neck and the body put together the neck should be about equal length with the body and then the legs should be another body length altogether like based on the cresst I would assume this is an adult and a female so we're looking at a 5-foot creature or the size of a large albatross whereas if it were male it would be a lot bigger it would have as opposed to a 12-foot wingspan for a female a 20-foot wingspan for a male and probably eight feet long so that's like the size of a giant territory okay more like a medium territory and if you don't know what a territory is what are you doing with your life there's a place to sing vulture it was huge look it up I'll probably put a link somewhere meanwhile the tale they have in order to give it the fallacious freakin tripod stance they have given it this absurdly long it's not even a ram for Incan tale because it's all snaky so Pteranodons tail it was a pterodactyl Oy which among other things means that its tail was very small it also wouldn't have been very flexible but the anterior half of it would have been pretty flexible but the posterior half was just this one solid rod and we're not sure why as a pterodactyl I did had membranes between the legs but we're not sure if the membranes went all the way to the tip of the tail or maybe just stopped at the base of the tail just not sure it would be cool if like the rod was part of the flight membrane and that was like a control surface that would be cool mention the head earlier it should have the bill curved upwards not not down like it is and and it should the top bill should be significantly longer than the bottom bill and this might be because it's a toy and they don't want to put a bunch of sharp points on it but it it was a really sharp point on the end of a Pteranodons bill the eyes are a little too far down and a little too I know that it looks like they're sort of not even in the head anymore but that pterosaurs skulls are weird they should practically be in the crest like they should be up and back and it has eyebrow ridges eyebrow ridges get rid of those no eyebrow ridges and have been saving the wings for last because that's the first thing that struck me when I looked at this the wings are terrible this has sort of two sickles nailed to the sides of its body and there's a lot wrong with that first off they should just be bigger the the I mentioned scale earlier 20-foot wings on an 8-foot creature that's a really high they call it aspect ratio for flying creatures and for airplanes I also mentioned albatross earlier for scaling albatross is a really apt comparison because not only was it I mean I would as our heavy gliders like Pteranodon lifestyle-wise it was also similar to an albatross at least as probably figure because we mostly find it in what was the interior North American Seaway during the Cretaceous and we find them in areas where they would have been hundreds of miles offshore in some cases so these were very much marine creatures like an albatross it has these sharp tips on the end it should have rounded tips because it messes up the aerodynamics as far as how they're attached to the legs these have this toy has it stopping at the knee essentially which could be accurate we're not sure where it where it attached it definitely did sort of a sharp turn down when it attached to the legs but it might have attached to the ankle for all we know I think ankle sounds cooler especially since that makes the membrane in between the legs a lot more relevant it appears to completely lack a wing finger and that's a problem the the arms all together are just incorrectly they it's sort of a back up until you hit the wrist and that's not good instead of having the long radius it should have a long carpal in fact a carpal was longer than the radius really not this sharp almost right angle transition from the arm to wing it was it was very gradual and the fingers should not be pointing at a right angle they should be outwards in fact the first finger was the shortest they sort of increased in length as you went the first finger was sort of second finger a little longer third finger a little longer fourth finger as long as the rest of the arm put together it also it has a membrane on the leading edge of the wing in front of the arm but it doesn't seems to lack a taro ed bone to be controlling it that's a bone unique to pterosaurs we're not sure what it corresponds to in other creatures if anything it could be a metacarpal it could be a carpal it controlled the leading edge of the wing so it's really important for a flying creature one more note on the fingers they might have been webbed we're not sure other pterosaurs have webbed fingers and webbed toes pterodactyl had webbed toes I'm pretty sure it's also committing this fallacy that you see everywhere about pterosaurs that they were sort of skin and bones basically a flying kite not true they were heavily muscular this wouldn't have had to you know jump off cliffs to takeoff it wouldn't have had to like wait for the right wind to be able to sort of lazily drift into the air it was a powered flier it was a very heavy flier actually a lot more of its muscle mass was in its arms than well arms and legs then a corresponding weight wise terrestrial creature would have had just because its arms and legs were so much longer the breathing apparatus on these guys would not have been as we know it with a diaphragm breathe in breathe out it would be more like a bird where it's sort of a pump that continuously circulates air throughout a bunch of sacs and air waves throughout the creature that sort of acted as a transition between the hard surfaces the bones and the tendons and the muscles of the arms and the the actual flight surfaces of the wings so there was no hard defining line between arm and wing it was it was a wing is probably if you take one thing away from this video it's that it wasn't these leathery flaps of skin either the structure of the wing we don't have any living analogs and we have just tantalizing evidence of whenever you see like shale or the Bavarian quarries keep turning up these trace fossils of crushed skeletons with with the the membrane still visible in the rock and we're so unclear about how they actually went together there's um these fibers that go on the the further you get from the creature that you see these fibers radiating out towards the edges of the wing a specific name for them that I'm blanking on but they're these dense little radiating fibers and they sort of look like coarse hairs but really long so it would be I don't know how rigid it was nobody really knows how rigid they would have been they would have deformed under load because that's the nature of having wings made of flesh but not these bat-like membranes that you usually see on the reconstructions I forgot to mention the feet there they're not bad instantly like I said they have the accurate number of toes but the toes should get longer the further from the center of the creature you get and the back of the foot didn't have quite as much of a pad as they're showing on this it would have been more triangular I suppose again this is referencing the track wise I think that's all I can think of to say about Pteranodon thing I hope this answered your pterodactyl related questions as well thank you for watching your dinosaurs are wrong please like comment subscribe suggest dinosaurs for me to talk about you could even send me a toy dinosaur our addresses in the description go to the geek group god org to find out how you can become a member or donate we'll see you next time this video is made possible by a grant from the Future girl Foundation this video was made possible by thousands of private donations from members and viewers like you please visit the geek group o-r-g for more information on how you can donate and become a part of our dreams of Evelyn not these bat-like membrane not these bat-like membranes that you usually see on the reconstructions it wasn't actually anywhere close to falling off the table

Channel: Chaotic Good

Views: 148,798

Rating: 4.9423504 out of 5

Keywords: the geek group, geekgroup, tgg, steven bellettini, dinosaur, dinosaurs, pterodactyl, dinos, paleontology, fossil, fossils, kid safe, kid friendly, child safe, child friendly, educational, toy, toys, anatomically correct, anatomy, winged tooth, wing finger, things to know, flying dinosaur, tardis, doctor who, parody, pterosaur, pterosaurs, beak, crest, prehistoric, archosauria, archosaur, archosaurs, prehistory, triassic, cretaceous, asteroid, extinct, plantigrade, k-t extinction event, pteranodon

Id: lo9NpyPVuwI

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/misscpb]

"If you don't know what a teratorn is- what are you doing with your life?"

Ninja Edit: thank you for posting this, by the way, I'm excited to watch other episodes of this! The guy was a joy to listen to because of how knowledgable and passionate he is!

Pro Edit: there's only six, finished them all already :/

[u/[deleted]]

Most "dinosaur" models are baffling in their construction.

Example: The T.rex on my shelf with a dragging tail, dog-like snout, and graceful mammalian torso. He's totally my bro, but not at all like the true Tyrannosaurus rex.