The largest flying animal ever
Its wings spanned about as much as a small aeroplane.
In the air · Flying reptiles
Quetzalcoatlus
Named after the feathered serpent god · KWET-zal-co-AT-lus
A gigantic flying reptile with a very long, stiff neck and a long, pointed, toothless beak.
- Size
- Wingspan 10 to 11m; as tall as a giraffe
- Lived
- About 68 to 66 million years ago
- Found in
- Texas, USA
Glides after you on vast wings. Move your pointer and see.
To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the quetzalcoatlus
As tall as a giraffe
Standing on the ground, it was about five metres tall.
It hunted on foot
It probably stalked across open ground like a giant stork, picking up small animals.
Named after a god
Quetzalcoatl was the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs.
Airborne in a second
It is thought to have vaulted into the air with its arms in under a second.
A long-distance flier
Once up, it may have glided for thousands of miles.
The real thing
Photos of the quetzalcoatlus
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Small dinosaurs and other animals caught on the ground.
How we know
The first bones were found in Texas in 1971 by a student.
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