What Is The Largest Flying Animal Today

An artist's interpretation of Quetzalcoatlus northropi wading in the water. The latest research describes this species of Quetzalcotalus every bit having a lifestyle like to today's herons. Credit: James Kuether

With a wingspan nearing 40 feet, the behemothic pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus is the largest known animal to take to the heaven. Merely known from only a few fossilized bones from West Texas, merely how such a massive beast got airborne has been mostly a matter of speculation.

Some call back information technology rocked forrad on its wingtips similar a vampire bat. Or that it built upward speed past running and flapping like an albatross. Or that it didn't fly at all.

But according to new research, the mammoth animate being probably leaped, jumping at least 8 anxiety into the air earlier lifting off past sweeping its wings.

The finding is part of the most comprehensive report of the pterosaur yet, and 1 of many to come from a new drove of Quetzalcoatlus research published by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology on December viii, 2021.

A footstep-by-footstep reconstruction of a proposed Quetzalcoatlus launch sequence. The pterosaur crouches, leaps so starts to flap its wings. Credit: Kevin Padian et al / John Conway

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-twelvemonth-one-time geology graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, in Big Bend National Park.

However, science has not kept upward with the pterosaur's pop image. Bated from Lawson's early descriptions of the fossils, almost no scientific inquiry has been published based on direct study of the bones.

Douglas Lawson with Quetzalcoatlus northropi wing bones that he discovered in Big Bend National Park. He is holding the humerus bone. Credit: The University of Texas at Austin / Jackson Schoolhouse of Geosciences

This new research collection – a monograph made up of an introduction and five studies – helps remedy that, said the co-editor of the collection, Matthew Brown, managing director of The Academy of Texas at Austin'due south Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Jackson Schoolhouse of Geosciences.

"This is the showtime time that we have had any kind of comprehensive study," Brown said. "Fifty-fifty though Quetzalcoatlus has been known for 50 years, it has been poorly known."

The UT collections holds all known Quetzalcoatlus fossils. The enquiry involved shut study of all confirmed and suspected Quetzalcoatlus bones, along with other pterosaur fossils recovered from Big Bend. This led to the identification of 2 new pterosaur species – including a new, smaller species of Quetzalcoatlus with an 18-to-20-human foot wingspan.

Brian Andres, who began studying Quetzalcoatlus every bit an undergraduate at the Jackson Schoolhouse 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.

Whereas the larger species is known from but about a dozen bones, at that place are hundreds of fossils from the smaller species. This provided enough material for scientists to reconstruct a almost consummate skeleton of the smaller species and study how it flew and moved. They and then applied their insights to its larger cousin.

The biomechanics inquiry was led by Kevin Padian, an emeritus professor and emeritus curator at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-editor of the research drove.

"Pterosaurs accept huge breastbones, which is where the flight muscles attach, then there is no doubt that they were terrific flyers," he said.

The two Quetzalcoatlus species both called Big Bend home about 70 1000000 years ago, when the region was an evergreen woods instead of the desert of today. But each led a distinct lifestyle, co-ordinate to Thomas Lehman, who started his research every bit a doctoral student at the Jackson School and is now a professor at Texas Tech University.

By examining the geological context in which the fossils were found, Lehman determined that the larger Quetzalcoatlus might have lived like today's herons, hunting alone in rivers and streams. The smaller species, in dissimilarity, appeared to flock together in lakes – either year-round or seasonally to mate – with at to the lowest degree 30 individuals constitute at a single fossil site.

Over the years, researchers and artists have pictured Quetzalcoatlus as a skimmer, forager and scavenger. In his report, Lehman presents Quetzalcoatlus as a prober that used its long, toothless jaws to sift for crabs, worms and clams from river bottoms and lakebeds.

The one-time managing director of the UT Vertebrate Paleontology Collections, Wann Langston, Jr., spent decades studying Quetzalcoatlus. Simply he was unable to publish near of his findings earlier he died in 2013. To acknowledge his contributions, Langston is listed every bit a co-author on 2 of the studies.

Darren Naish, a paleozoologist and pterosaur adept who was not involved with the research, said that the science presented in the monograph is a boon to pterosaur scientific discipline and will serve every bit a springboard for hereafter inquiry.

"To say that this work is long awaited is something of an understatement. The good news is that it very much delivers, providing the definite treatment of this iconic animal," he said. "Never before has then much detailed information on azhdarchids (the pterosaur family that includes Quetzalcoatlus) been gathered in the same place, this meaning that the piece of work will serve every bit the standard go-to written report of this grouping for years – probably decades – to come."

For more on this research, see Legendary Flying Reptile: Fleshing Out the Basic of Quetzalcoatlus, Earth's Largest Flier Ever.

Reference: "Functional morphology of Quetzalcoatlus Lawson 1975 (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchoidea)" by Kevin Padian, James R. Cunningham, Wann Langston JR. and John Conway, seven Dec 2021, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/worlds-largest-flying-animal-with-a-wingspan-nearing-40-feet-leaped-aloft-to-fly/

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