![]() ![]() The two Quetzalcoatlus species both called Big Bend home about 70 million years ago, when the region was an evergreen forest instead of the desert of today. “Pterosaurs have huge breastbones, which is where the flight muscles attach, so there is no doubt that they were terrific flyers,” he says. Kevin Padian, an emeritus professor and emeritus curator at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-editor of the research collection, led the biomechanics research. They then applied their insights to its larger cousin. This provided enough material for scientists to reconstruct a nearly complete skeleton of the smaller species and study how it flew and moved. Whereas the larger species, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, is known from only about a dozen bones, there are hundreds of fossils from the smaller species. An artist’s interpretation Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni, a new species with an 18-20 foot wingspan, soaring above the water. This led to the identification of two new pterosaur species-including a new, smaller species of Quetzalcoatlus with an 18-to-20-foot wingspan.īrian Andres, who began studying Quetzalcoatlus as an undergraduate at the Jackson School and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield, performed the analysis and named the new species Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni in honor of Lawson. The new research involved close study of all confirmed and suspected Quetzalcoatlus bones, along with other pterosaur fossils recovered from Big Bend. ![]() The University of Texas collections hold all known Quetzalcoatlus fossils. “Even though Quetzalcoatlus has been known for 50 years, it has been poorly known.” “This is the first time that we have had any kind of comprehensive study,” Brown says. This new research collection-a monograph made up of an introduction and five studies-helps remedy that, says Matthew Brown, co-editor of the collection and director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Jackson School of Geosciences. The name pays homage to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and aircraft designer Jack Northrop. Douglas Lawson holds the humerus of the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which he discovered. Aside from Lawson’s early descriptions of the fossils, almost no scientific research has been published based on direct study of the bones. ![]() ![]() However, science has not kept up with the pterosaur’s popular image. Seen in movies, comic strips, and suspended from museum ceilings, the giant “Texas Pterosaur” has been a media staple since it was discovered in 1971 by Douglas Lawson, then a 22-year-old geology graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, in Big Bend National Park. The finding is part of the most comprehensive study of the pterosaur yet, and one of many to come from a new collection of Quetzalcoatlus research in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. An artist’s interpretation of the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi wading in water. Or that it built up speed by running and flapping like an albatross. Some think it rocked forward on its wingtips like a vampire bat. But just how such a massive animal got airborne has been mostly a matter of speculation. With a wingspan nearing 40 feet, Quetzalcoatlus is the largest known animal to take to the sky. The mammoth pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus probably jumped at least 8 feet into the air before lifting off by sweeping its wings, according to new research. ![]()
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