TPO 47

In this set of materials, both the reading and the lecturer discuss the capability of pterosaurs, which were huge animals like a giraffe, for flying by flapping their wings. Although the reading provides three theories for rejecting the possibility of flying these animals, the speaker refutes these ideas through several reasons, which will be described in this report.

To start off with, the passage points out that pterosaurs may be cold-blooded animals that have slow metabolisms so that they would not have enough energy for flying. The lecturer, in contrast, rejects this by claiming that new studies of pterosaurs have shown that pterosaur has dense hair covered like a feather. She explains that warm-blooded animals have covered hair because they must both regulate their body temperatures and stay it at a high level. As a result, pterosaurs were warm-blooded; therefore, their metabolisms of the body were at a high level; hence, they had enough energy for flying.

Going through the next approach, unlike the reading passage, which states that this animal has a high weight, so they could not flying, the professor argues that the pterosaurs have unusual anatomic features. She says that a lot of hollows were inside of their bones as well as being firm and solid so that pterosaurs' weight might be low enough to make them able to powered flight.

To take into the end, although the passage says that these animals need strong and big muscles in their back legs for jumping like birds, but they did not have these features, and they cannot take off from the ground, the speaker disagrees by mentioning that birds and pterosaurs are different in many ways. Birds only use their 2 limbs for both jumping and starting to fly. However, pterosaurs used all 4 limbs for jumping like cats so that they did not have problems running fast or jumping enough for flying.