Giant flying reptile cups dinosaurs

Even with the nickname of Tyrannosaurus, you are not necessarily safe from ancient flying reptiles. They can eat the newborn T. Rex and other small dinosaurs.

The Quetzalcoatlus reptiles walk and grab the baby dinosaurs to eat meat.(Photo: LiveScience)

A new study reveals that a group of flying reptiles living in an era of dinosaurs about 230 to 65 million years ago did not catch prey while flying, but clung them on the ground.

So far, paleontologists have painted portraits of pterosaurs "winged lizards" as those who eat while flying are ground, just like the gulls still catch fish today.

But the newly discovered findings are not so unanimous.

"According to our hypothesis, flying is basically a way of moving. They use flying to go from point A to B. Most of their lives, when feeding and breeding, are done. on the ground, not on the air, " said Mark Witton, co-author from the University of Portsmouth in England.

Witton's group derives this from the fossil analysis of a toothless pterosaurs group called azhdarchid - a much larger average group than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the group's largest species, Quetzalcoatlu, weighs up to 250 kg with a wingspan of more than 10 meters and a height equivalent to a giraffe.

50% of their fossils are found on land. Other features of the bone, such as long legs and necks, are not suitable for a person who earns a fly.

"All the details of the physical form and environment in which they live show that they make a living by walking on the ground, searching and grabbing their prey," the authors say.