CarrieVS wrote:Behold the pterosaur Nyctosaurus.Spoiler: show
A few points to note:
- We have more than one fossil skull with a crest like that, so it's not some bizarrely deformed individual. They really did look like that.
- That crest is half a metre long, the length of the body being just over a foot.
- It's been suggested that the prongs supported a membrane, either for display or for aerodynamic purposes, which to my mind at least would make it look a little less odd. A little. But the fossil evidence is very much against that.
- Yes, that damned thing flew. It may well have done little else, somewhat like swifts today. Pterosaurs couldn't walk on their hind legs, and while many were surprisingly agile quadrupeds, this pterosaur - uniquely - had lost all the digits on its forelimbs except for the one that supports the wing, so we can pretty well infer that it wasn't so comfortable on the ground.
I'll put it under "Should be extincted" in my Species notebook.