Witton stresses that Quetz would have been more graceful and powerful with its takeoff, on account of it being better adapted to the terrestrial lifestyle than a bat, but the mechanics would largely be the same. The latter is actually a lot stronger than a hind-limb launch, as the biggest set of muscles in the body – the flight muscles – are directly employed in generating the necessary thrust to remain airborne.”įor an idea of how this worked, take a look at the video of a bat’s quad launch below. “Some launch using their legs alone (birds), while others take off using all four limbs, with the arms generating most of the vertical thrust during takeoff (several bat species). “Mike and Jim were aware that there’s more than one way for a vertebrate animal to take off,” Witton said. But that all changed when two biomechanists, Mike Habib and Jim Cunningham, proposed that Quetz shoved off with all four limbs in what’s known as a quad launch. Until fairly recently, scientists had operated under the assumption that Quetz took off like a bird, spreading its wings and bounding into the air with its hind limbs. That’s a whole lot of bulk to get airborne, so how did it do it? Imagine a bird-like creature with a 36-foot wingspan, a massive beak, and fierce talons soaring through the skies above you Now you can build and fly a.

Still, even though Quetz was technically on a quite strict paleo diet, Witton thinks it may have weighed in at as much as 550 pounds, about a dozen times heavier than the heftiest modern flying bird.

Quetzalcoatlus wingspan