Now, could you first all tell me your name? Okay, welcome Andrew. Would you like
to just stand here for a minute please, and what Biffen is going to do, and
myself, is we're going to equip you with certain bits of material. Right so
perhaps if you can just stand just slightly more that way, thank you very
much, what we've got is effectively a pair of gloves.
Would you like to slip your hands into that? And
can you do exactly the same with that one? That's terrific, thank you. Then
finally just I'm just going to clip something on your back, there we go
Right now if you just stand a little bit more here,
could you just extend your arms out? Ah, excellent.
There's a beginning here of a wing, but it's only a beginning because what
we've done is we've equipped Andrew with some flaps, tissue which might provide
some sort of supporting surface for gliding magnificently through the sky.
However it's not gonna work quite yet - could I have two more volunteers please?
Could I have the girl who's third up with the stripes,
and another one please,
the second along there please, the chap who's looking away.
Would
you like to come round here for a minute, and would you like to stay there. Can you
first of all tell me your names? Lucy and Toby, right, okay, could each of you from
Andrew's wing, do you see this little red things on either end, can you draw them out?
There we go, a bit further a little bit further, there we go, okay. Now
Andrew is properly equipped and could you give a small demonstration of your
flying abilities, if you could just raise them up?
Excellent, marvelous, okay, right the way, high and down. The point
about the modification of Andrew's
hand into a wing, is that's exactly what happens with this pterodactyl. It is in
fact the equivalent what we usually call our ring fingers, this one here, which has
been extended into one enormous finger and that's what these structures
are out here. One single extension of the finger provides this huge wing which
allowed Andrew, ideally, to fly. Right now first of all, Toby and Lucy, if we could
just retract these wings.
Splendid, thank you, now if you two could kindly stay here,
but could I thank Andrew very much indeed for his help. If you make
your way down in that direction, thank you.
Well the size that Andrew was as a pterodactyl was actually quite similar
to some of the ones which soared above the dinosaurs, but some of them were even
bigger and they were absolutely enormous. I think, yes, coming down here we have,
if you like, a rather extraordinary Christmas present.
We'll just take it down first of all to the ground like that. Now we need to go
through this quite carefully, because the first thing I have to do close to
Christmas is unwrap this thing like that. Now what I want the two of you to do is
Lucy, can you walk up those steps there?
And Toby I want you to walk up those steps up there.
Go slowly, watch your step and let's see what happens, okay? Hold that
quite tight, get your hand properly around it, there's no
hurry, no hurry at all.
Super! Keep on walking, Lucy, you're doing well Toby - wait!
Tremendous, tremendous, thank you. Can you stay there for a minute because here we
have a life-sized replica of one of the biggest of these pterodactyls. These were
astonishingly large creatures, they are as big as a small glider and you must
imagine these things soaring above the lands where the dinosaurs were roaming
at the same time. There's almost no way one can capture the beauty of
what those things must have been like, probably soaring kilometres up into the
air, with a wonderful system of aeronautical, if you like, design. So this
shows how this transition into the air has been achieved by one group of
reptiles.
you