“No, no,” his friend answered. “Pteranodon was so big. From tip to tip of the planes or wings was nearly twenty feet. And his body was very small. Even the bones were tiny. A Pteranodon bone over two feet long and two inches in diameter, was like a piece of heavy cardboard rolled into a tube.”
“Hollow?”
“Quite, quite hollow. And he had very little weight to carry. We know he could not have flapped his wings very much.”
“How can you find that out?” queried Perry. “No one was there to see him.”
“No, no. But it takes muscle strength to flap wings, and it needs a strong breastbone to attach the muscles. The flying lizards did not have this. Then, too, the bones were too thin to flap such big wings. It was nearly all gliding. So you can see why the birds were the winners in the fight.”
“I surely do,” the boy answered. “But if the bird plan won out, and the pterodactyl didn’t, why has the bat plan worked?”
“The bat’s wings are four times as strong as the pterodactyl’s, because all four fingers are there,” was the reply. “Then, too, the bat is a mammal and warm-blooded. Besides which, most bats are small. The big bats fly slowly, flapping their wings like a crow.”
“Were there any birds to set up in competition with the flying lizards?” asked the boy.
“Not at first,” the other said. “But when the pterodactyl failed, Nature had to start on something else. So she tried birds. Still, the first ones were more than half reptiles. They even had teeth.”
“Birds with teeth?”