70 million years ago, huge pterosaurs lived on the territory of modern Romania, completely different from their relatives - thin graceful quetzalcoatls. Romanian pterosaurs were tough and powerful and terrified the entire area.
According to modern concepts, pterosaurs for the most part did not grow larger than a dog and ate dinosaurs the size of a rat and the cubs of larger species. Some, however, became larger by the end of the Cretaceous. So, in Kansas, the remains of a crane-like, long-necked and thin-winged quetzalcoatl (Quetzalcoatlus northropi) from the Azhdarchidae family, whose wingspan reached 12 meters, were found. New research shows, however, that not all members of this family were similar to cranes: there were also short-necked, tightly knocked hatzegopteryx (Hatzegopteryx), the remains of which were first found in Romania in the early nineties. It is assumed that their wingspan was not inferior to the quetzalcoatls.
Little remains of the hatzegopteryx, so one has to judge their size and appearance by separate fragments of skulls and spine … British paleontologists Mark Witton and Darren Naish studied the remains of the Romanian flying giant and came to the conclusion that he possessed a strong wide neck (his spine near the skull was three times thicker than that of quetzalcoatl). Scientists also note that the structure of the porous tissue that filled the bones could impart greater strength to these animals.
Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0
Previous studies have shown that the hatcegopteryx jaw reached 100 cm from edge to edge, which is generally unusual for sinewy and thin-boned azhdarchids. Perhaps other parameters of these animals were very different from those of quetzalcoatls and other members of the family.
The remains of hatzegopteryx were found in a part of Romania, which at the end of the Cretaceous was an island in the Tethys Sea. Along with the giant pterosaur, long-necked sauropods as tall as a horse lived on the island at that time. The remains of other carnivorous dinosaurs were not found there, so scientists believe that pterosaurs stood at the very top of the food chain and hunted large herbivores. “He could easily swallow a human,” explains Mark Whitton.
The research results are published in the journal PeerJ.
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