{"id":8124,"date":"2017-02-16T08:10:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T14:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2017-02-16T08:10:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T14:10:29","slug":"i-dont-need-to-be-scooped-up-by-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/02\/16\/i-dont-need-to-be-scooped-up-by-this\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don&#8217;t Need To Be Scooped Up By This"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people like horror movies, and some people like dinosaurs, probably for the same reason. <em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (4 February 2017) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg23331112-500-giant-flying-reptile-was-top-predator-like-a-winged\/\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a> on a new discovery which makes me shudder even as it delights me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The newly unearthed fossils from the Transylvania region of Romania date from 70 million years ago. They reveal a little-known azhdarchid, <i>Hatzegopteryx<\/i>, with a short, massive neck. Much stronger than others in the same family, it probably feasted on bigger prey, such as dinosaurs the size of a small horse (<i>PeerJ<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/doi.org\/bxvs\">doi.org\/bxvs<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bones we are taking out of Romania show a much more robust and massive animal than we previously imagined,\u201d says Mark Witton at Portsmouth University, UK. <i>Hatzegopteryx<\/i> would have been an apex predator, a bit like <i>T. rex<\/i>. With a jaw half a metre wide, it could have swallowed a small human or a child, says Witton.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/pterosaurs.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/more_azhdarchids_with_clouds1.jpg?resize=370%2C281\" width=\"370\" height=\"281\" \/>A small horse!<\/p>\n<p>An <em>azhdarchid <\/em>is part of the <em>Pterosaur<\/em> family, the big gliders you often see in various dinosaur movies and documentaries. One, in fact, shows up <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/02\/12\/belated-movie-reviews-151\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>The People That Time Forgot<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, trying to get at the people in the flying machine (I shan&#8217;t grace it with the more modern appellation <em>airplane<\/em>), although they made the mistake, I think, of calling it a <em>pterodactyl<\/em> &#8211; if I remember my childhood model building proper, the <em>pterodactyls<\/em> had the tails with the diamond-shaped bone mass at the end, while <em>pteranadons<\/em> did not, so I think it was a <em>pteranadon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<em>azhdarchid<\/em> even have a blog dedicated to them, <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/pterosaurs.wordpress.com\/\">Azhdarchid Paleobiology<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, although it doesn&#8217;t appear to have been updated since 2008, sad to say. The lovely illustration to the right comes from that blog. A quick perusal shows some comparative illustrations. An illustration on a <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/tetrapod-zoology\/new-azhdarchid-pterosaur-eurazhdarcho\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Scientific American<\/strong><\/em><\/a> blog shows them the size of giraffes! Now I&#8217;m feeling small. And helpless. Maybe I shouldn&#8217;t sleep tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people like horror movies, and some people like dinosaurs, probably for the same reason. NewScientist (4 February 2017) reports on a new discovery which makes me shudder even as it delights me: The newly unearthed fossils from the Transylvania region of Romania date from 70 million years ago. They \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/02\/16\/i-dont-need-to-be-scooped-up-by-this\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8130,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions\/8130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}