Quetzalcoatlus was a pterodactyloid pterosaur that lives in the south lands, and the largest known flying
animal to have ever lived.
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The feeding habits of Quetzalcoatlus are controversial. Originally, it was assumed to catch fish and crustaceans, like most other pterosaurs, until it was realized that it lived 248 miles from any shore during the Cretaceous period and that there was no evidence for an inland water source for miles around. Lawson, in 1975, rejected the fish eating hypothesis and said that it instead was a scavenger, like a marabou stork, feeding on the carcasses of sauropods and other dead dinosaurs.
In 1996, Thomas Lehman and Langston rejected the scavenging hypothesis, pointing out that the lower jaws bent so strongly downwards that even when they closed completely a gap of over five centimeters remained with the upper jaws, very different from the hooked beaks of specialized scavenging birds. They suggested that with its long neck vertebrae and long toothless jaws Quetzalcoatlus fed like modern-day skimmers, catching fish on the wing while cleaving the waves with its beak. While this skim-feeding view became widely accepted, it was not subjected to scientific research until 2007 when a study showed that for such large pterosaurs it was not a viable method because due to excessive drag the energy costs would be too high. In 2008 pterosaur workers Mark Paul Witton and Darren Naish published an examination of possible feeding habits and ecology of azhdarchids. Witton and Naish noted that most azhdarchid remains are found in inland deposits far from the seas or other large bodies of water required for skimming. Additionally, the beak, jaw, and neck anatomy are unlike those of any known skimming animal. Rather, they concluded that azhdarchids were more likely terrestrial stalkers, similar to modern storks, and probably hunted small vertebrates on land or in small streams. Though Quetzalcoatlus, like other pterosaurs, was a quadruped when on the ground, Quetzalcoatlus and other azhdarchids have fore and hind limb proportions more similar to modern running ungulate mammals than to their smaller cousins, implying that they were uniquely suited to a terrestrial lifestyle.