“Pterosaurs have huge breastbones, which is where the flight muscles attach, so there is no doubt that they were terrific flyers,” he said. The biomechanics research was led by Kevin Padian, an emeritus professor and emeritus curator at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-editor of the research collection. They then applied their insights to its larger cousin. This provided enough material for scientists to reconstruct a nearly complete skeleton of the smaller species and study how it flew and moved. Whereas the larger species is known from only about a dozen bones, there are hundreds of fossils from the smaller species.
This led to the identification of two new pterosaur species – including a new, smaller species of Quetzalcoatlus with an 18-to-20-foot wingspan.īrian Andres, who began studying Quetzalcoatlus as an undergraduate at the Jackson School and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield, performed the analysis and named the new species Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni in honor of Lawson. The research involved close study of all confirmed and suspected Quetzalcoatlus bones, along with other pterosaur fossils recovered from Big Bend. The UT collections holds all known Quetzalcoatlus fossils. “Even though Quetzalcoatlus has been known for 50 years, it has been poorly known.” “This is the first time that we have had any kind of comprehensive study,” Brown said. This new research collection – a monograph made up of an introduction and five studies – helps remedy that, said the co-editor of the collection, Matthew Brown, director of The University of Texas at Austin’s Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Jackson School of Geosciences. Credit: The University of Texas at Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences Douglas Lawson with Quetzalcoatlus northropi wing bones that he discovered in Big Bend National Park.
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