67 Million Years Ago Flying Reptiles the Size of Fighter Jets Soared Through the Air
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magine a bird-lizard hybrid the size of a fighter jet flying above you. Terrifying? You can sleep safe tonight knowing that won't happen anytime soon. Quetzalcoatlus is a genus a pterosaurs from the late Cretaceous Period that vanished from Earth during the mass extinction event that also did away with the dinosaurs. Yet 67 million years ago, there were Quetzalcoatluses with thirty-six foot wingspans in the skies above what is now Texas. We know these monstrous stork-like creatures existed thanks to Douglas Lawson, who as a University of Texas Austin grad student discovering the first Quetzalcoatlus fossils in 1975. Today, scientists are still actively debating how exactly they flew, and lived...