YouTube video on dinosaur flight origin takes 48 minutes to reveal nothing of value

Here is a YouTube video link
to a topic titled, “Evolutions of Dinosaur Flight – The Many Ways to Almost Make a Bird” by ‘Your Dinosaurs are Wrong’ from one day ago. Ironic that the site has this name. It sets a high bar that is not met here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfG3g3dDLlk

My comment is copied here:
“Phylogenetic analysis answers all your questions, separating flightless birds from pre-flight theropods. So stop asking questions, stop using your imagination and start building your own data matrix. Let us all know if it comes out different from ‘the large reptile tree’ currently online.

Forget trees down. Flapping preceded flight which preceded gliding. Here’s how we know: A key trait everyone overlooks is the elongate, locked-down coracoid, a trait shared with pre-volant pterosaur ancestors (Cosesaurus, Sharovipteryx, etc). Bats lack a coracoid so substitute a longer clavicle. Bird and pterosaurs ancestors had short, sliding coracoids. Flapping bipeds locked down the coracoids. Flapping has to be fast enough to seem like a blur in order to produce thrust. 

Flapping is a completely new form of locomotion that requires a bipedal configuration. Bats are inverted bipeds. Pterosaurs that made quadrupedal tracks were secondarily quadrupedal using their forelimbs more like ski poles, not weight-bearing limbs (unless poling while floating in arm-deep waters for which we have manus only ichnites). The posteriorly-oriented finger three in pterosaurs is different from that of all other tetrapods. So is the posterior 180 degree flexion of the wing finger. People: Take this as a CLUE. On that note: Mike Habib introduced his quad-launch take-off technique for pterosaurs in his ill-informed first paper in which he cheated pterosaur morphology. Habib’s myth requires the implantation of finger four against the substrate. Problem is: no tracks EVER preserve this. Only the three free fingers make impressions. Mistakes like this need to be erased.

Please add at least ten Solnhofen birds to your data matrix and eventual cladogram. You’ll see a variety that belies the brand name ‘Archaeopteryx’.

Figure 2. Most of the complete Solnhofen birds, including Archaeopteryx and the eleventh specimen to scale. ” data-image-caption=”

Figure 2. Most of the complete Solnhofen birds, including Archaeopteryx and the eleventh specimen to scale.

” data-large-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/archaeopteryx_specimens2.jpg?w=222″ src=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/archaeopteryx_specimens2.jpg?w=222″ alt=”Figure 2. Most of the complete Solnhofen birds, including Archaeopteryx and the eleventh specimen to scale.” class=”wp-image-29216″ srcset=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/archaeopteryx_specimens2.jpg?w=222 222w, https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/archaeopteryx_specimens2.jpg?w=444 444w, https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/archaeopteryx_specimens2.jpg?w=65 65w” sizes=”(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px” />

@36:40 you report on Yi qi and kin. These are misinterpretations. See: “like-yi-qi-the-new-ambopteryx-does-not-have-bat-wings” and “when-a-simple-torsion-fracture-turned-an-early-cretaceous-bird-into-bizarre-bat-wing-dinosaur”.

Try to avoid Elopteryx and other largely unknown skeletons. Too much speculation. Too few data points.

In the background of your studio is a pterosaur silhouette with a deep chord wing membrane attached to the ankles. No specimens preserve this morphology – even the Sordes holotype, which has one articulated wing and one that has been smeared toward the tail. Pterosaur wings stretched between the wing tip and elbow with a short fuselage fillet extending back to mid-thigh. This enables COMPLETE wing folding, as in birds.”