concept

Quadrupedal launch

The way the giant pterosaurs almost certainly left the ground: instead of leaping off the hind legs as a bird does, they planted all four limbs and vaulted into the air off their powerful forelimbs — like a pole-vaulter. The genius is that the forelimbs doing the launching are the same limbs that carry the wings, so no launch muscle becomes useless dead weight in flight. The palaeontologist Mike Habib argues this is why pterosaurs could outgrow every bird. Banshees and the toruk, vaulting off a high crag on their wing-limbs, inherit the same strategy.