Quetzelcoatlus was pterodactyloid Pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous of North America, and the largest known flying animal to have ever lived. It was a member of the Azhdarchidae, a family of advanced toothless pterosaurs with unusually long, stiffened necks. Even though it is not a dinosaur, It would be amazing to see this creature glide through the sky.Skull material from the as of yet unnamed smaller species shows that Quetzelcoatlus had a long sharp beak, with no hook and the end, like a modern stork. This is contrary to earlier skull material, which seemed to have shown an unusually blunt snout. based on the inadvertent inclusion of jaw material of an other pterosaur species, possibly a tapejarid or a form related toTupuxuara. A skull crest was present, but its exact size and shape is currently unknown.The first Quetzalcoatlus fossils were discovered in Texas (from the Maastrichtian Javelina Formation at Big Bend National Park) in 1971 by geology graduate student Douglas A. Lawson. The specimen consisted of a partial wing (made up of the forearms and elongated fourth finger in pterosaurs), from an individual later estimated at over to 12 m (40 ft) in wingspan. Lawson discovered a second site of the same age, about forty kilometer from the first, where between 1972 and 1974 he and Professor Winn Langston Jr. of the Texas Memorial Museum unearthed three fragmentary skeletons of much smaller individuals. Lawson in 1975 announced the find in an article inScience. That same year, in a subsequent letter to the same journal he made the original large specimen, TMM 41450-3, the holotype of a new genus and species, Quetzalcoatlus northropi. The genus name refers to the Aztec "feathered serpent" god Quetzalcoatl. The specific name honors John Knudsen Northrop, the founder of Northrop, who was interested in large tailless aircraft designs resembling Quetzalcoatlus. At first it was assumed that the smaller specimens were juvenile or subadult forms of the larger type. Later, when more remains were found, it was realized they could have been a separate species. This possible second species from Texas was provisionally referred to as a Quetzalcoatlus sp. by Alexander Kellner and Langston in 1996, indicating that its status was too uncertain to give it a full new species name. The smaller specimens are more complete than theQ. northropi holotype, and include four partial skulls, though they are much less massive, with an estimated wingspan of 5.5 meters (18 ft).
An azhdarchid neck vertebra, discovered in 2002 from the Maastrichtian age Hell Creek Formation, may also belong to Quetzalcoatlus. The specimen (BMR P2002.2) was recovered accidentally when it was included in a field jacket prepared to transport part of a tyrannosaur specimen. Despite this association with the remains of a large carnivorous dinosaur, it shows no evidence that it was fed on by the dinosaur. The bone came from an individual azhdarchid pterosaur estimated to have had a wingspan of 5 - 5.5m (16.5 - 18 ft).
In 1995, a partial skeleton of a juvenile azhdarchid was discovered in Dinosaur Provincial Park, probably fromQuetzalcoatlus or another closely related animal. The carcass had been scavenged by the small dromaeosauridSaurornitholestes, which broke off a tooth on one of the wing bones.
