Howtown explains 'What Quetzalcoatlus was really like' for a late National Fossil Day

I told my readers to "stay tuned" for "a late celebration of National Fossil Day on Friday" at the end of Bright Sun Films 'Bankrupt - Hudson's Bay Company,' a tale of the Retail Apocalypse for Department Store Day, so watch Howtown explain What Quetzalcoatlus was really like.

Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest known flying animals, survives in science as sixteen wing bones pulled from Cretaceous Big Bend by grad student Doug Lawson in 1971. Paleontologists reverse-engineer the rest of its body by referencing its Azhdarchid cousins like Zhejiangopterus, and Q. lawsoni, making inferences from extant archosaurs like birds and alligators, examining trackways, and modeling their wings in flight software. Still, there's a lot that they don't know about how these giant pterosaurs lived. Thin bone walls, rare 3-D preservation, and million-to-one erosion odds explain why cousins Hatzegopteryx, Arambourgiania, Cryodrakon, and Thanatosdrakon remain fragmentary in the fossil record. The sparse clues they left behind have inspired a wide range of depictions in documentaries over the years, the pinnacle of which was Prehistoric Planet from the BBC's Natural History team.

I'm a paleontologist, as I summarized in 'Human Footprint' on PBS Terra describes 'The Mysterious Mass Extinction Hidden in LA', and I found this video to be a good summary of both how paleontologists work and how organisms become fossils. Joss Fong did her research, and it shows.

Howtown put together a short showing the "wide range of depictions in documentaries over the years," Giant pterosaurs through the years, rated by David Hone.

Not only do the organisms evolve, so do their depictions as scientists learn more about them.

Speaking of how paleontologists recreate extinct organisms, I'm sharing How do they know about dinosaur lips?

"Theropod dinosaur facial reconstruction and the importance of soft tissues in paleobiology." Cullen et al., Science 2023

Science!

That's a wrap for today, but I'm not done with holidays. Stay tuned for a late celebration of National Sports Day with the Emmy Awards for Welcome to Wrexham and Love on the Spectrum tomorrow.