Quetzalcoatlus and Maribous
Published on 6 Jun 2008 at 11:23 pm.
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Filed under Dinosaurs, Paleontology.
(The painting above is by Mark Witton click here for better image)
The Quetzalcoatlus is a giant pterosaur from the late Cretaceous Period with a 30 foot wingspan… the size of a small airplane. Many of the smaller pterosaurs, which populated the edges of the Western Interior Seaway of North America of old (now the Great Plains region), probably ate fish like modern gulls and pelicans. But it is not clear how the Quetzalcoatlus behaved. Their neck was probably too long and unwieldy to fish like gulls and pelicans, but it has been suggested that they might have behaved like skimmers skimming the water for their prey. Other ideas have included scavanging like vultures.
In a recent New Scientist article, Mark Witton and Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth, UK, found that this group of pterosaurs ”lacked all 30 specialised adaptations for skimming seen in the head and neck of the modern avian skimmer”.
Instead they suggest that the stiff neck of the Quetzalcoatlus and their great height (15 feet… taller than a giraffe) would work well for hunting small prey on the ground or in shallow water much like herons or storks. Since Quetzalcoatlus fossils are found in inland regions, they reason that these animals probably behaved like Maribou Storks (more links to images here), which inhabit the dry savannahs of Africa and eat just about anything (dead or alive) that they can get their beaks on.
Here is a painting of hunting Quetzalcoatlus by Mark Witton
(better image here)
Further reading:
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
