Quetzalcoatlus

1 week ago - Returning in 1971, Lawson discovered a 3 ft (0.91 m) bone while investigating an arroyo on the western edge of the park, and returned to Austin with a 1 ft (0.30 m) section of it. He and Langston then identified it as a pterosaur fossil based on its hollow internal structure with thin walls.

March 20, 2024 - Like many other flying animals, Quetzalcoatlus had hollow bones that reduced its weight, but Q. northropi was still much larger than the largest known flying birds, having a wingspan of up to 6 meters.

Quetzalcoatlus was a large pterosaur with a wingspan of between 10 and 12 meters (33 to 39 feet) but lightly built for its size. Estimates of its adult weight range between 75 to 544 kilograms.

Quetzalcoatlus is often described as the largest pterosaur and the largest flying creature of all time. Despite its massive size and coexistence with Tyrannosaurus though, its biology has long eluded discovery.

February 1, 2023 - I would assume for such a big animal the head is huge because a longer beak is an advantage. For something this size, taking off would be quite a lot of effort, so a longer beak would make snatching food on the wing easier, meaning less risk of crashing onto the ground/into water, both of which could easily be fatal.

March 26, 2025 - 70 million-year-old fossils reveal unique walking behavior of this huge, heron-like pterosaur with a 40-foot wingspan

February 28, 2025 - Estimates of Quetzalcoatlus' size have varied over the years, with wingspans ranging from 17 to 85 feet (5 to 26 meters). Today, the more widely accepted estimate is around 33 feet (10 meters) — that’s longer than a school bus!

December 16, 2021 - Standing over 12 feet tall with a 40-foot wingspan, the ancient pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus was the biggest flying animal in history.

December 23, 2023 - Bees scare off elephants. The size difference between those two is way more than the size difference between a Tyrannosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus. I also listed several examples of smaller predators bullying larger predators off their meals using numbers and intimidation.

Finally, the size of the animals under consideration needs to be acknowledged: 200–250 kg is a remarkably low mass for an animal that would stand nearly 2.5 m tall at its shoulder.

June 27, 2023 - Quetzalcoatlus was one of the largest pterosaurs to dominate the prehistoric skies. Learn more about its size and characteristics, and fascinating facts about other pterosaurs as well.

The bigger one, the huge Quetzalcoatlus northropi stood as tall as a giraffe on the ground, more than five meters tall and weighed 250 kilograms. This is the maximum weight limit for a flying animal, and only a few other azhdarchids come close ...

April 30, 2023 - Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to criticise your art, which is btw great. It’s just that I think the skull size of this species is derived from a much smaller cousin to it, afaik. Normally the head will be relatively smaller on similar, larger animals. Think a cat and a cougar, or a small hawk and an eagle.

August 28, 2023 - Can you imagine a bird of more than 10 meters flying? This was the largest pterodactyl that existed in the Cretaceous and became extinct 66 million years ago.

July 22, 2025 - Doing some rough calculations, assuming the humans used for scale are the same size at 5 ft 8 inches, Ark's Titan is 104.4 ft tall, and around 387 ft long. Jurassic's Titan is around 145 ft tall, and an eye watering 410~ ft long.

An official website of the United States government · Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States

April 4, 2022 - Quetzalcoatlus remains one of the most mind blowing dinosaur species in terms of sheer size. It is not only that this incredible pterosaur had such an amazing size to it however, but also that it was able to get airborne. Let’s take a look at just how enormous this prehistoric beast was.

Quetzalcoatlus (meaning feathered serpent) is an extinct genus of large pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous of North America. The type species is Quetzalcoatlus northropi. The holotype was discovered in Texas in 1971 by geology graduate student Douglas A. Lawson.

Living throughout the late Cretaceous, Quetzalcoatlus northropi could grow to have a wingspan of up to 36 feet— about the size of a standard city bus. Early scientists estimated that this species of pterosaur may have weighed anywhere from 200 to 500 pounds.