The Size of Quetzalcoatlus
The biggest flying animal ever to have lived
The Cessna 172R “Skyhawk” is an airplane. Weighing about a ton, it has a wingspan of exactly 11 meters. Although the Skyhawk is of course a small airplane, you’d expect no animal to be able to match such a wingspan.
Well, you’d be wrong. Meet Quetzalcoatlus — in a manner of speaking, because this reptile went extinct around 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid hit our planet. This caused the extinction of all pterosaurs (of which Quetzalcoatlus was a member). You might be familiar with this event (known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event), since it also killed off the dinosaurs.
So, who’s Quetzalcoatlus? Quetzalcoatlus was a reptile, more specifically a Pterosaur, who’s standing height matched that of a giraffe. That in itself is quite special. However, Quetzalcoatlus flew. And with a wingspan of around 11 meters, it was indeed about as wide as the Skyhawk. Are you impressed yet? If not, note that Quetzalcoatlus had a head 3 meters long which it used to pick up and eat baby dinosaurs.
Although Quetzalcoatlus was similar in size to a Skyhawk, note that it had hollow bones — even more hollow than bird bones — , which made the animal relatively light and helped it to be able to fly. Even so, the consensus on Quetzalcoatlus’ weight (on…
