Like dinosaurs, it was likely warm- blooded and active.
#Quetzalcoatlus wingspan skin
Unlike the serpent god, Quetzalcoatlus had no feathers: Its body, including wings of skin and fibers of keratin, was covered with hair, as in all pterosaurs. The fossil pterosaur - which he named after the Aztec flying serpent god - consisted of a partial wing that implied a size comparable to that of some airplanes and was at least 50% bigger than the wings of the largest known bird, an extinct and much larger relative of living condors and a descendent of the dinosaurs.
The original Quetzalcoatlus fossils were discovered by Douglas Lawson, who at the time was a 22-year-old studying for a master’s degree in geology at the University of Texas, Austin, and later became a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. (Photo courtesy of the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin) The results are revolutionary for the study of pterosaurs - the first animals, after insects, ever to evolve powered flight.”ĭouglas Lawson in 1975 with Quetzalcoatlus wing bones that he discovered in Big Bend National Park.
“This is the first real look at the entirety of the largest animal ever to fly, as far as we know. “This ancient flying reptile is legendary, although most of the public conception of the animal is artistic, not scientific,” said Padian, who co-edited the monograph. How can an animal walk with wings so long that they touch the ground when folded? What did it eat, and how did it feed? How strong a flier was it? And how does an animal whose wings span 40 feet, yet whose legs are only 6 feet high at the hip, launch itself into the air? One of the papers, co-authored by University of California, Berkeley, paleontologist Kevin Padian, emeritus professor of integrative biology and emeritus curator in the UC Museum of Paleontology, answers some of the mysteries surrounding the flying and walking behavior of this unique animal, about which little has been published since its discovery more than 45 years ago. The papers describe the pterosaur’s geological and ecological setting during the Upper Cretaceous, its anatomy and taxonomic position, and how it moved on the ground and in the air. In six papers published today as a Memoir by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, scientists and an artist provide the most complete picture yet of this dinosaur relative, the largest example of which is represented by just a single set of fossilized bones collected in the late 1970s from Big Bend National Park. With a 37- to 40-foot wingspan, it was the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth. Look around any wetland today and you’re likely to see 3-foot-tall egrets or 4-foot-tall herons wading in the shallows in stealthy search of fish, insects or crustaceans.īut 70 million years ago, along the Rio Grande River in Texas, a more impressive and scarier creature stalked the marshes: the 12-foot-tall pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus. Quetzalcoatlus stood about 12 feet tall and walked with a unique gait because of its enormous 20-foot wings, which touched the ground when folded. An artist’s rendition of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a type of pterosaur and the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth.
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