Quetzalcoatlus

Quetzalcoatlus is a genus of azhdarchid pterosaur that lived during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous in North America. The type specimen, recovered in 1971 from the Javelina Formation of Texas, United States, consists of several wing fragments and was described as Quetzalcoatlus northropi in 1975 by Douglas Lawson. The generic name refers to the Aztec serpent god of the sky, Quetzalcōātl, while the specific name honors Jack Northrop, designer of a tailless fixed-wing aircraft. The remains of a second species were found between 1972 and 1974, also by Lawson, around 40 km (25 mi) from the Q. northropi locality. In 2021, these remains were assigned to the name Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni by Brian Andres and (posthumously) Wann Langston Jr., as part of a series of publications on the genus.

Quetzalcoatlus

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
QuetzalcoatlinaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
volantPBDB
Motility
fast-movingPBDB
Vision
well-developedPBDB
Environment
terrestrialPBDB
Mass
250 kgWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 8 of 8 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 8 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72.7 Mya65.5 Mya

8 occurrences of Quetzalcoatlus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

8 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

2 formations

Javelina — 29.40°N, 103.20°WJavelina — 29.25°N, 103.25°WJavelina — 29.29°N, 103.53°WBlack Peaks — 29.34°N, 103.44°W

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The named rock units Quetzalcoatlus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Quetzalcoatlus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Quetzalcoatlus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

1 taxon

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Quetzalcoatlus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

3 references

Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Quetzalcoatlus

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
kenchoo
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itQuetzalcoatlinae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lawson 1975