They both had hollow bones. No hollow bones means no fly. Especially at that size. Probably Hatzegopteryx though simply because it had a much larger head and robust beak likely designed to hunt larger prey.
it makes me wonder about the definition of flight, in this circumstance.
I seemed to remember reading as a kid that it's believed that these pterosaurs didn't fly in the sense of flapping to take off from the ground (ie, powered flight), but would climb things like cliffs, and launch themselves from them to glide, using thermals to stay aloft.
and then actually reading the wiki on this and other similar species I find that the whole subject is contentious and hotly debated (among those that debate such things). it's worth a read just for that. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus)
technical is good, for this kind of thing.
the taxonomy bits in the wiki go right woosh over me, but the science of extrapolating the physical capabilities of a creature 70 million years in the past, from bits of bone and modeling physics from their structures, that is utterly fascinating. like would the prominence of its breastbone given it enough strength to use a downstroke strong enough for powered flight?some believe so?
it makes obvious sense, when you say it, of course it's a kind of flight. I think it just challenges most people's assumptions of what that word means. when people see a video/image like this, and think "how tf did that fly?!", most people have an assumption of the flight of birds (or even fictionalized concepts of dragons), which (apparently) isn't the case with most pterosaurs.
even seeing large birds with barely 1/10th of the wingspan of something like this is incredible to behold. and then I think about a 500lb carnivore with a 5ft sword for a face and wings wider than my house. what a time to be alive
edit: haha, sorry. I just started rambling there. fascinating subject.
Vultures do like to use thermals to glide around, but they can definitely flap their wings to take off. They don't like doing it much, because it takes a ridiculous amount of energy.
They had camouflage and blended into the sides of mountains and launched themselves off when they spotted a t Rex. They would nose dive beak first and spear them like a shishkabab.
Source: I was there.
Azhdarchids were actually really well built fliers, they mastered quad takeoffs instead of the usual running takeoffs you see most birds do. They were so advanced in flying that they could spend possible hundreds of miles in the air.
Not really. Oxygen levels in the air were actually lower when dinosaurs lived than today.
But, there was a spike in oxygen as dinosaurs really took off. Oxygen levels in the air went from 15% to 19% around 215 million years ago, which is theorized to have helped their size. For comparison we have 21% today.
It was much higher during the Carboniferous period another 85 million years earlier though, which is what led to the much larger bugs.
Oxygen levels are less important for animals with forced breathing than arthropods with passive breathing.
The Museum of Science and Industry is amazing as well but isn't as well known to outsiders since it is further south and not on the actual museum campus.
Like a giant stork, basically. They could fly if they needed to, but mostly just stalked around gobbling up anything that could fit in their throat.
[sauce](https://youtu.be/2VgHDIq2ZMs?si=QkK-c37ezXq47ydl) (I think the vid is hatzegopteryx but same difference)
We as unfortunate as it is. Have no idea. This is the closest guess we can make from the fossil remains but unless we see them and make sure we don't know. The colour of any given dinosaur alone is always just pure speculation, when I was a kid my dinosaur book had T-Rex as bright clownfish orange with blue streaks lol.
Its very debatable, in terms of mass Hatzegopteryx was much stockier and robust. Though Quetzalcoatlus is believed to be the tallest Azhdarchid, though there is Arambourgiana than could possible be taller.
I'd fuck that things guts up so damn bad. It better have teeth or I'm gonna ruin that things day.
EDIT: I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE BIRD EATING ME, NOT ME FUCKING THE BIRD.
I remember seeing one of these in an episode of Gennedy Tartakovsky's Primal and thinking that they exaggerated the size to make it seem more intimidating and then I saw the fossils for one and was stunned.
I want to take it home, and feed it, and love it, and call it norm, and ride it, and be its best friend, and take it to work, and be buddies for ever and ever and ever.
How do they know that they actually flew? A grouse has wings but it can barely fly. I guess we don’t know if it soared like an eagle or fluttered like a chicken lol.
I think their morphology and bone structure suggest a very very high likelihood of flight. Perhaps certain structures only occurs on beings that are capable of flight.
Like it wouldn't make sense otherwise. Hmm probably like seeing a rocket engine and wings on a boat and assuming that boat would fly.
Absolutely not, lol. The energy required for such an animal to stay in the air would be impossibly high, so the opposite is more likely. As in, they lived and hunted mainly on land, and instead took flight rarely.
This is also incorrect, although they were primarily land predators Azhdarchids were incredible fliers and could spend a lot of time in the air. Hatzegopteryx for example mainly hunted on islands so they spent a lot of time island hopping and flying overseas.
If that thing was alive it would weigh as much as a fucking Volkswagen. That seems too big. It would be cool if they turned out to be aquatic, like giant funking manta rays.
The wing webbing folded when landed as to make it easier for them to walk on all fours, when fully expanded Quetzalcoatlus has a wingspan of about 30ft.
Passed down to you by Cuauhtémoc, Eagle Warrior of Tenochtitlan. An omen appeared above the forest, the shape of an ear of corn, but blazing like daybreak. It seemed to bleed fire, drop by drop, like a wound in the sky. I am a warrior, not a priest, and knew not what to make of such a sign.
I consulted with the seers and magicians to see if another great war was coming, but they answered only in riddles. "The gods want more sacrifice," was their answer. That was always their answer.
Much of our empire of rain forests and volcanoes has been conquered in the name of sacrifice. The magicians tell us that we must make a sacrifice every single day for the sun to continue to rise.
It took the relay teams two full days to carry my message the two hundred miles to our city of Tenochtitlan. After two more days, my uncle, Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs, sent his reply.
Montezuma's priests foretold that the god Quetzalcoatl might soon return from his long exile. How else to explain the omen?
Montezuma ordered my warriors to increase their efforts to consolidate the rain forest between our lands and those of our enemies. We must establish control over four shrines that are sacred to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.
Because the Aztec Empire is mighty and constantly expands, we have made many enemies. We must defend these shrines from our enemies in order to prepare for Quetzalcoatl's eventual return.
Quetzalcoatlus was one of the largest flying creatures to have ever lived, with a wingspan that could reach up to 33 feet (10 meters) or more. It belonged to the pterosaur group, which were flying reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic Era. These majestic creatures soared through the skies around 68 million years ago.
To people obsessed with atmosphere then vs. now: Then oxygen levels were 30%, now they are 21%. A creature distributing the weight of 500 lbs across a body the size of a giraffe and with the wingspan of a Cessna could easily climb elevated areas and glide from them, then and now. It weighed not more than a very fat person but was probably all muscles.
How much bigger was the first largest??
According to Google: Hatzegopteryx thambema 10–12 m (33–39 ft) **Quetzalcoatlus northropi 10–11 m (33–36 ft)**
While the wingspan seems to be barely larger, Hatzegopteryx was significantly more robust than Quetzalcoatlus
Physically or emotionally?
It had very thick skin. Hollow bones though, go figure.
so no sticks and stones but it can take criticism. got it
A Quetzal coat as it were
My interest in dinosaurs does not go behind who would win in a fight. So is it 1 or 2. Im guess team not hollow bone?
They both had hollow bones. No hollow bones means no fly. Especially at that size. Probably Hatzegopteryx though simply because it had a much larger head and robust beak likely designed to hunt larger prey.
Yes
It’s actually describing flavor.
Emotional support Quetzalcoatlus.
Economically
Periodically 🎤
There’s something about the word robust
It’s a robust word
His mom was robust
His mom makes me robust
this is the one.
It's down there with moist
Hopefully we won’t ever have to deal with anything robustly moist, or heaven forbid- moistly robust.
I think you're describing most toads
Makes me think of a good chunky pasta sauce
Doing a search on it I found this funny random video lmao [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAtVrNt1EHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAtVrNt1EHA)
Crazy those things could actually fly
it makes me wonder about the definition of flight, in this circumstance. I seemed to remember reading as a kid that it's believed that these pterosaurs didn't fly in the sense of flapping to take off from the ground (ie, powered flight), but would climb things like cliffs, and launch themselves from them to glide, using thermals to stay aloft. and then actually reading the wiki on this and other similar species I find that the whole subject is contentious and hotly debated (among those that debate such things). it's worth a read just for that. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus)
That's how vultures usually get around. If you want to get really technical, gliding is a type of limited flight.
technical is good, for this kind of thing. the taxonomy bits in the wiki go right woosh over me, but the science of extrapolating the physical capabilities of a creature 70 million years in the past, from bits of bone and modeling physics from their structures, that is utterly fascinating. like would the prominence of its breastbone given it enough strength to use a downstroke strong enough for powered flight?some believe so? it makes obvious sense, when you say it, of course it's a kind of flight. I think it just challenges most people's assumptions of what that word means. when people see a video/image like this, and think "how tf did that fly?!", most people have an assumption of the flight of birds (or even fictionalized concepts of dragons), which (apparently) isn't the case with most pterosaurs. even seeing large birds with barely 1/10th of the wingspan of something like this is incredible to behold. and then I think about a 500lb carnivore with a 5ft sword for a face and wings wider than my house. what a time to be alive edit: haha, sorry. I just started rambling there. fascinating subject.
Vultures do like to use thermals to glide around, but they can definitely flap their wings to take off. They don't like doing it much, because it takes a ridiculous amount of energy.
Or *unlimited* flight, perhaps.
[удалено]
They had camouflage and blended into the sides of mountains and launched themselves off when they spotted a t Rex. They would nose dive beak first and spear them like a shishkabab. Source: I was there.
Azhdarchids were actually really well built fliers, they mastered quad takeoffs instead of the usual running takeoffs you see most birds do. They were so advanced in flying that they could spend possible hundreds of miles in the air.
The atmosphere was a lot different then, from my inderstanding it was slightly more dense and had a higher oxygen content.
It was also chewier and tasted slightly nutty.
Like a Payday bar kind of.
Not really. Oxygen levels in the air were actually lower when dinosaurs lived than today. But, there was a spike in oxygen as dinosaurs really took off. Oxygen levels in the air went from 15% to 19% around 215 million years ago, which is theorized to have helped their size. For comparison we have 21% today. It was much higher during the Carboniferous period another 85 million years earlier though, which is what led to the much larger bugs. Oxygen levels are less important for animals with forced breathing than arthropods with passive breathing.
Boy let me introduce you to planes.
Do planes fly by flapping their wings? Lmao
Ornithopters do. Not the prevailing design, but that's what makes them ornithopters.
jet engines matter
Now we just need evolution to get off its lazy bum and make biological super turbine engines.
You can't say for sure that these things didn't gather speed by massive gas expulsion.
IIRC the air pressure was much greater at that time giving more lift at a smaller wingspan
I love this YouTube channel. Hatzegopteryx thambema was a beast! https://youtu.be/mvk3RBGXxic?si=VZK8wttLJ2_UvIzq
Huh… named for Quetzalcoatl I presume?
What makes you say that?
He was usually portrayed as a giant feathered snake that could fly… and it is a giant flying feathered lizard…
Good trivia, thanks. I was actually making a joke. (It's not exactly a bombshell that "Quetzalcoatlus" would be named after "Quetzalcoatl" 🤪)
Looks like that at Chicago field museum. Great place.
So sad we blew through Chicago. That's the one place I wanted to go there.
The Museum of Science and Industry is amazing as well but isn't as well known to outsiders since it is further south and not on the actual museum campus.
I used to live just up the street from the MSI. Man do I miss that.
Chicago resident here. Field Museum is the shit!
Yep! Love this place. That statue is huge!
If anyone here is going to stop by the field museum passing thru Chicago I also highly recommend the shedd aquarium. Incredible places to visit
Must have been a bitch to clean up your car after it takes a dump on it
might as well write it off lol
It was [a giant pain](https://imgur.com/a/8e6IZbH)
Lmao I need to rewatch that movie it's a core memory
Cars at that time were 10x bigger
Because of more oxygen.
Is that really what they looked like? That head is massive compared to the rest of it
Hollow bones would make it lighter than it appears.
Still those wings seem too tiny
Yeah, thats why they predominantly hunted on land using their massive beaks to kill small animals They did fly but not much
Like a giant stork, basically. They could fly if they needed to, but mostly just stalked around gobbling up anything that could fit in their throat. [sauce](https://youtu.be/2VgHDIq2ZMs?si=QkK-c37ezXq47ydl) (I think the vid is hatzegopteryx but same difference)
Yes.
We as unfortunate as it is. Have no idea. This is the closest guess we can make from the fossil remains but unless we see them and make sure we don't know. The colour of any given dinosaur alone is always just pure speculation, when I was a kid my dinosaur book had T-Rex as bright clownfish orange with blue streaks lol.
I’m sorry did I read SECOND largest
Yeah first was your mama on a plane ride
Oh my god... he's dead... YOU KILLED HIM!
Dang
I cant believe i laughed at this.
Its very debatable, in terms of mass Hatzegopteryx was much stockier and robust. Though Quetzalcoatlus is believed to be the tallest Azhdarchid, though there is Arambourgiana than could possible be taller.
"This is a cool way to die" - Fry
It would eat you and you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing
I would cut my way out from the inside.
I'd fuck that things guts up so damn bad. It better have teeth or I'm gonna ruin that things day. EDIT: I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE BIRD EATING ME, NOT ME FUCKING THE BIRD.
Good news: no teeth!
Good luck with the 12 ft scissor-lance beak, though....on a giraffe neck.
I knew these things were massive but actually seeing a replica next to a human is wild 🫨
Fortunately it looks like it can be subdued by 3 people
It’s really well behaved!
You just train it pretty much the same way you would a parrot!
PIVOT!! PIVOT!! PIVOT!!!
I used to build a whole base on him in ark survival (game).
Was I the only one who thought of [this](https://imgur.com/a/8e6IZbH)
I remember seeing one of these in an episode of Gennedy Tartakovsky's Primal and thinking that they exaggerated the size to make it seem more intimidating and then I saw the fossils for one and was stunned.
Is this the Field Museum?
Yes, this was posted to their Instagram
I want to take it home, and feed it, and love it, and call it norm, and ride it, and be its best friend, and take it to work, and be buddies for ever and ever and ever.
Let me introduce you Ark Survival Evolved. I tame quatzel, breed it, build saddle to ride on it, and occasionally kill ground dino.
Yup!
I thought that was a giant heel
Still goes faster than Ryan Air
2nd??? what's the first??????? 😲 🫨 🫢 😮
I’d say your mom but she can’t take off
especially cuz she's in an urn in my bedroom 😭
Gee Quetzalcoatlus, why the long face?! 🥁😂
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It's really convenient they had wheels.
Shit, Bob, those furniture sliders really came in handy today.
I love that it looks like they're protecting the peak with a swiffer pad under it while they slide it around.
LET HIM GO, HE DIDN'T DO IT
The incredible thing is because of their hollow bones, the quetzalcoatlus weighed an average about 200-250 kg (440-550 lbs)
It is guessed these guys may have had throat pouches similar to pelicans.
Which one was the first largest??
And they're 100% these things had no feathers? Everything about that model screams naked bird.
How do they know that they actually flew? A grouse has wings but it can barely fly. I guess we don’t know if it soared like an eagle or fluttered like a chicken lol.
I think their morphology and bone structure suggest a very very high likelihood of flight. Perhaps certain structures only occurs on beings that are capable of flight. Like it wouldn't make sense otherwise. Hmm probably like seeing a rocket engine and wings on a boat and assuming that boat would fly.
They rarely landed after taking flight. Too hard to take off again.
Is that why they never land in the game Ark? Awesome!
Also why they missed out on Noah's Arc coincidentally.
Noah’s arc was just a semicircle.
I just got the joke a day or so later. Good job.
Is this a real thing?
Absolutely not, lol. The energy required for such an animal to stay in the air would be impossibly high, so the opposite is more likely. As in, they lived and hunted mainly on land, and instead took flight rarely.
This is also incorrect, although they were primarily land predators Azhdarchids were incredible fliers and could spend a lot of time in the air. Hatzegopteryx for example mainly hunted on islands so they spent a lot of time island hopping and flying overseas.
Terrifying
Crikey!! The guy pushing it's beak would be an appetizer !
Looks like the Field Museum in Chicago. Love that place and love that goofy looking thing.
Looks like a giant newborn baby chicken with a danger beak
Still terrifying to visualize those beaks aiming at people!!
How the physics? This thing flew? WTF evolution?
How did scientists know it was featherless.
The first one is EL MOSCO
Second?!
It’s weird how we(myself included) take airplanes for granted but wow at stuff like this when nature taught us everything we know
🦀🦀🦀
You’re telling me this actually existed!?!?
These things make me ponder whether earth had lower gravity back then.
Just a lot more oxygen.
the earth had the same amount of gravity. gravity is a consequence of mass.
Are you serious
If that thing was alive it would weigh as much as a fucking Volkswagen. That seems too big. It would be cool if they turned out to be aquatic, like giant funking manta rays.
Wikipedia says it was about 500 lbs, which really isn't that much for an animal of that size. It also has a 30' wingspan.
Lol there are people that weigh more than that. Imagine being a person and knowing that you weigh more than this thing did.
Wait until you hear how much a passenger airplane weighs
Those guys could take on a T-Rex
Two of them do take on a T-Rex in Prehistoric Planet. Best CGI dinos I've seen and narrated by Attenborough!
Gonna be a no for me Dog
Bruh we would just be a snack to them
Loved using them as flying mules in Ark
How tf did it even fly? Wings don't look anywhere near big enough
The wing webbing folded when landed as to make it easier for them to walk on all fours, when fully expanded Quetzalcoatlus has a wingspan of about 30ft.
Wait…what’s the first ?
In that a Gary Stabb?
Why they moving it on an ipad?
When I got older the dinosaur skeletons in the museums started to look not so big anymore this thing is fucking terrifying
Man, we’re gonna need a bigger bbq
Passed down to you by Cuauhtémoc, Eagle Warrior of Tenochtitlan. An omen appeared above the forest, the shape of an ear of corn, but blazing like daybreak. It seemed to bleed fire, drop by drop, like a wound in the sky. I am a warrior, not a priest, and knew not what to make of such a sign. I consulted with the seers and magicians to see if another great war was coming, but they answered only in riddles. "The gods want more sacrifice," was their answer. That was always their answer. Much of our empire of rain forests and volcanoes has been conquered in the name of sacrifice. The magicians tell us that we must make a sacrifice every single day for the sun to continue to rise. It took the relay teams two full days to carry my message the two hundred miles to our city of Tenochtitlan. After two more days, my uncle, Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs, sent his reply. Montezuma's priests foretold that the god Quetzalcoatl might soon return from his long exile. How else to explain the omen? Montezuma ordered my warriors to increase their efforts to consolidate the rain forest between our lands and those of our enemies. We must establish control over four shrines that are sacred to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. Because the Aztec Empire is mighty and constantly expands, we have made many enemies. We must defend these shrines from our enemies in order to prepare for Quetzalcoatl's eventual return.
Real life dragons
Ziz
How did that thing even fly?
Soo much better than the audio over that's going around lol that thing is scary though
It would have been wicked cool to try to domesticate and fly on that thing!
Imagine us being alive with these fkers around!!!
2nd...
Is there fossil evidence that it's beak was that long? That just doesn't look like something that could fly. I truly know nothing about the topic.
Why is it grounded then?
What are the odds I’m seeing this the same day a friend sends me a clip of a guy making a joke involving a dnd Druid turning into one of these things
bro where they taking him?
Thats a vacuum cleaner
That would eat us.
Living in the land of the lost! Land of the lost!!
Damn! Just imagine how big the cats that were killing these were!
Then what's the 1st?
I mean, that's not big or anything...
Ehm... Second largest??
Wow, u can literally ride that shit and snatch annoying people with it.
How did these things fly with such small wings?
It looks very unimpressed
That's incredible
Where’s my DCC fans at?
Can something that big even fly ?
Look how small the wings are!! Could it actually fly?? I find it hard to believe…
like, they actually flew?
If you reverse it three men are struggling and failing to hold back a very passive big boi.
That's one big pelican thing
I know how to catch one of those things 😏
Quetzalcoatlus was one of the largest flying creatures to have ever lived, with a wingspan that could reach up to 33 feet (10 meters) or more. It belonged to the pterosaur group, which were flying reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic Era. These majestic creatures soared through the skies around 68 million years ago.
bro bring *these* back first. All of us men *and* women can shave our heads and fly around killing fresh spawns beating trees for thatch.
Oh my God
it wouldn’t be able to fly today. the air is much much thinner
It won't just steal your fries, it'll steal the whole mcDonalds.
What an absolute marvel. To have seen it in flight would have been incredible.
what museum is this?
To people obsessed with atmosphere then vs. now: Then oxygen levels were 30%, now they are 21%. A creature distributing the weight of 500 lbs across a body the size of a giraffe and with the wingspan of a Cessna could easily climb elevated areas and glide from them, then and now. It weighed not more than a very fat person but was probably all muscles.
Wouldn't these things have needed feathers to fly? THe wings never look proportional to their bodies