Quetzalcoatlus - Ancient Animal

today I know that we are going to be talking about Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatlus was the largest known animal to ever take flight it was about the size of a giraffe and had the wingspan the size of a small plane before we talked about how amazing this animal was let's talk about its origins Quetzalcoatlus was a pterosaur pterosaurs are often called pterodactyls in pop culture but pterodactyls are just one genus of pterosaur pterosaurs are also not dinosaurs most people assume any animal from the Mesozoic is a dinosaur but in reality there is a lot of other reptilian groups that were not dinosaurs pterosaurs appeared 228 million years ago in the Late Triassic it is somewhat unclear what group these animals evolved from we do not have multiple transitional species as of now but we are still able to see how more primitive pterosaurs evolved into more advanced species the first pterosaurs had long tails and relatively inefficient wings these animals were the first vertebrates to take to the skies the only other animals to fly before them were insects pterosaurs would evolve to have short tails and very efficient wings unlike modern birds who have to run and flap their wings to take off pterosaurs could launch themselves into the air in a single movement and take flight or it shouldn't say single movement but a few movements since they are capable of taking off in this way they are able to grow very large and still be able to fly the group known as that as dark heads were able to take these size limits to the extremes not all as dark kids were giants but many of them were species like arrow Titan Volvo Draco and of course Quetzalcoatlus were all giant Quetzalcoatl us in particular is the largest known animal to be able to fly it had an incredible wingspan of 36 feet larger estimates claimed a wingspan above 40 feet and that is certainly possible based on its wingspan it would have been 10 feet at the shoulder and 18 feet tall at the tip of the head that means it would have been taller than most giraffes the weight is even more of a mystery than the wingspan but at the common consensus is that it weighed 450 to 550 pounds of course individuals could have way more or less than that range so what did the San will eat there are a few main hypotheses in regards to how they fed scavenging hunting in the water and hunting on land have all been proposed scavenging was ruled out because when the jaws shut the tips of the beak do not meet this means it would be very difficult for the animal to pull meat off of a carcass hunting in the water was an originally accepted idea though after his studies it seems to be very unlikely for a flying animal as big as Quetzalcoatl Asit would not have been able to dive into the water so it likely had to skim the water to feed skimming is a feeding technique seen in many modern-day bird species it entails flying very close to the water's surface so a beak can be used to catch fish Quetzalcoatl this was too big and not adapted to this lifestyle if it tried to dip its beak into the water it would dare be way too much drag and it would likely crash since scavenging and skimming can be crossed out that means hunting on land is the most likely feeding technique they were terrestrial stalkers like modern-day storks they would use their massive heads and powerful necks to skewer prey small dinosaurs and other vertebrates would have been a common meal for this beast imagine how frightening it would be if this animal still existed a giraffe sized stork with the wingspan of a small plane planning to skewer you it must have been a deadly hunter since this animal had such a massive wingspan it was able to soar for many miles it is thought that it could go up to 80 miles per hour and travel over 9,000 miles that is an impressive feat for modern days planes another cool thing about these animals is that they actually had hair like fibers called beak no fibers peak no fibers were dense hair like structures seen in pterosaurs the presence of these peak no fibers lead us to believe that they were warm-blooded even though they are considered to be hair they are more closely related to feathers they provided no aid in flight but they were hollow tubes like many primitive feathers though they were able to fly they're still prey for some animals there's no evidence of this particular species being preyed upon but other pterosaurs were consumed by terrestrial as well as marine predators what so quad Willis existed at the very end of the Cretaceous of course this means that when extinct due to the KPG mass extinction pterosaurs were becoming more and more diverse as the Cretaceous progressed and is likely that we would have seen more and more unique pterosaurs questo Cuadrilla strep resents just one very unique species of the countless species of pterosaur unfortunately though it was lost at the end of the Cretaceous and an animal that size has never been seen again well there has been other animals that take flight such as birds that were actually very massive maybe a possible future video thanks for watching and I hope you guys like learning about this amazing animal even comment down below and subscribe to the channel also I made a bunch of other ancient animal videos just like this one if you want to check them out see in the next episode of North o - see ya [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: NORTH 02

Views: 6,953

Rating: 4.9577465 out of 5

Keywords: ancient, animal, prehistoric, fossil, discovery, ptero, pterosaur, pterodactyl, pteranodon, dino, dinosaur, paleo, profile, trey, the, explainer, north, 02, science, learn, fun, watch, youtube

Id: VzRbAY63Uds

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Denisova]

Heck what a neck ;-) thanks for sharing!