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BBC News: Ancient American bird was glider – BBC News article; How the dinosaur bird took to the skies – Daily Telegraph article; Secret of flight for world's largest bird revealed – COSMOS magazine article; Argentavis, the largest flying bird, was a master glider – Article from the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science
It is one of the largest flying birds known to have existed, only likely exceeded by measurement of wingspan by Pelagornis sandersi, discovered in 1983. [6] Fossil remains of this species have been dated to Late Miocene, about 6 to 8 million years ago, and one of the few teratorn finds in South America.
Quetzalcoatlus (/ k ɛ t s əl k oʊ ˈ æ t l ə s /) is a genus of azhdarchid pterosaur that lived during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous in North America. The type specimen, recovered in 1971 from the Javelina Formation of Texas, United States, consists of several wing fragments and was described as Quetzalcoatlus northropi in 1975 by Douglas Lawson.
Pteranodon (/ t ə ˈ r æ n ə d ɒ n /; from Ancient Greek: πτερόν, romanized: pteron ' wing ' and ἀνόδων, anodon ' toothless ') [2] [better source needed] is a genus of pterosaur that included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with P. longiceps having a wingspan of over 6 m (20 ft).
These birds ranged from about the size of a modern cassowary 1.5 to 1.8 m (4 ft 11 in to 5 ft 11 in) up to 3 m (9 ft 10 in) in the case of Dromornis stirtoni, possibly the largest bird that ever lived after the elephant bird .
During the early Cenozoic, after the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, mammals underwent an evolutionary diversification, and some bird groups around the world developed a tendency towards gigantism; this included the Gastornithidae, the Dromornithidae, the Palaeognathae, and the Phorusrhacidae. [36]
[2] [3] Gargantuavis is the largest known bird of the Mesozoic, a size ranging between the cassowary and the ostrich, and a mass of 141 kg (311 lb) like modern ostriches, exemplifying the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs wasn't a necessary condition for the emergence of giant terrestrial birds. [1]
The largest prehistoric horse was Equus giganteus of North America. It was estimated to grow to more than 1,250 kg (1.38 short tons) and 2 m (6 ft 7 in) at the shoulders. [138] The largest anchitherine equid was Hypohippus at 403 to 600 kg (888 to 1,323 lb), comparable to large modern domestic horses.