Hatzegopteryx

It's odd that razor sharp teeth is kind of the gold standard for a scary animal, but honestly, getting swallowed whole and slowly digested by stomach acid sounds so much more horrific. I'd so much rather a T-Rex eat me than that.

Drowning in stomach acid sounds particularly excruciating.
- It would have cost you nothing to not say that.
- it sounds...faster? So, it's got that going for it (which is nice)
If it's any consolation, you would suffocate long before any stomach acid got to you.
I recall reading a meme about the ocean being bullshit, something along the lines of "the most common way to die on land is something making your blood fall out".
I dunno, can the stomach digest you, or smother you, before you pull out a knife and slice your way out?
I feel like “being comped to death” beats “swallowed whole” on the total chance of dying.
- The stomach isn't like a big cave with a pool af acid in it. It is compacted by muscles around it so if you are swallowed whole, you would have to fight against those muscles to even be able to move at all. If your arms are above your head it's likely you would die before you are able to move them to your hips to draw your knives. If they are at your hips, good look moving the knives to point outwards. Also the stomache is lined with thick mucous to protect it from sharp objects... Also it's completely dark and disorienting.
  It's almost certainly you'd drown, suffocate and get crushed VERY quickly after getting swallowed alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8576PlXbUk
Pelicanstyle

WTF?! Is that a bird or a starship?

- The turning invisible at the end is just great.
There's a reason the Romulan starship class was named Bird Of Prey.
- It was modeled after albatrosses?
It's a bird of prey.
Yes
Add a Cesna 137 there too.
looks like an upside down stingray to me
And that’s not a tail either.

Whoa… that damn thing could eat a horse.

“Hatzegopteryx belonged to the pterosaur family, which were previously thought to only eat smaller prey. But researchers have now realized that they could eat other dinosaurs and animals as big as a horse.”

Well, that sounds like a lot, until you realise that mfking seagulls can eat rabbits.
Your link mentions them weighing "a quarter of a ton". Now, idk what "ton" theyre using there, but a quarter of a US ton would be "only" 226 kg. That's ~500lbs.
I'd like to remind everyone that a reality TV-show called "My 600-lb life" exists.
So regarding hypothetical horror scenarios, I'm not too fussed about the overgrown seagull as much as I am about the feathered 4000-8000kg monster with a skull almost the size of an adult woman running at me at 70km/h.
- Here's another comparison picture, though I'm not sure if it's valid or not. Looks cool, regardless.
- Sharing tracker free link (junk at end deleted) to that since I prefer ’em. +(Piped mirror)
  … oh wow I’ve seen that, absolutely wild. Is that seagull-doctor recommended behavior? Wonder how long it took that bird to fly again.
- Yeah, but a rabbit sounds like the kind of thing you expect to get eaten by a bird. A goddamn horse is not!
- Imagining the feeling of having an entire fucking rabbit stuck in my throat isn't something I wanted but I've now thought about. Thanks. I'm going to drink some water.
- Ok, but the fact that humans can pack on enough fat to weigh 4x what is a not uncommon healthy weight for an adult or 3x what is healthy for among our larger adults is irrelevant. 250 lbs in a healthy adult human would be well into outlier territory. Like I looked it up and at 6’11” healthy weight by bmi is up to 230lbs. And sure could a 6’11” person theoretically get into bodybuilding, yes, but at that height your body is already struggling against itself and you’ve gotta watch your back because it’s already not having a good time
- ~~Uh, according to Google 1 US ton is 2000 lbs.~~
Haha, another silly meme dinosaur
...
JESUS CHRIST THAT THING'S REAL?!?
- except its not a dinosaur...
- I know! I’m stuck somewhere between astonishment & being pissed off they didn’t let Goldblum ride one of those things in one of the Jurassic Parks.
So zebras?

Other weird pictures

Ya see, this i don't mind getting eaten by. But OP's pic looks like some sort of eldritch horror that would have me spiral into madness before devouring me.
- Thank you for the perfect complementary comment, sincerely,.
  Haha, I actually laughed out loud.
  You're entirely right.
  I love the different interpretations of concept artists, whether they're galactic or paleontological or whatever, it's always fun to see the differences between what people come up with.

Nowadays the most dangerous birdy is this one, capable of gutting you with a kick and they don't hesitate to do so either.

As I learned yesterday, they are illegal as pets in Montreal.
- Well, Australians and their pets..... https://yewtu.be/watch?v=H6ej9F7wWyU 🥶
Wrong, it is the common Australian magpie during swooping season.
Cassowary?
- I dunno about Cass, but I'm definitely wary....
- Not sure if you can see the link in the comment you replied to, but yes.

Also a nice birdy

we have found birdperson
- Cool username btw
- Yes, this birdy certainly looks like a person in disguise, almost also because of the size. Watching this at night in a forest will put your balls in your throat.
That first picture..
Reminds me of the Wilddruden from the Ronja Räubertochter (Ronia, the Robber's Daughter) movie.
- Oh man, this movie had such an impact on a couple of generations of Scandinavians. I've talked to multiple folks in the BDSM community who had their sexual awakening to the scene where Ronja is tied underground by the small elf people.
I have to agree
- /c/Beetlejuicing
As a small mammal compared to that my evolutionarily developed survival instincts must be off. I want to befriend it. I assume it wants to eat children though.
Harpy eagle?
- Yes
That too right picture for a second looked like a man in a bunny suit t-bagging the camera

Despite its size, it only weighed about 250 lbs. Most of its skull is hollow.

just like the average internet user.
In international standard SI units that's about 113 kg.
- If you're using SI, shouldn't it be 1.1 kN?

not unlike... Take this bird cross it with a giraffe and tadaa

Depends, did it speak German?

Das haben wir damals noch nicht gemacht, aber mittlerweile ist das ein MUSS für jeden anständigen Dino
Hatzenich

This must be a poor reconstruction, no? how could this possibly fly? Tiny wings and a massive imbalance with like 2/3 of the thing being neck and head?

There's a little of both in play here.
First, the whole black and white part of the illustration is a neck flap that may or may not have existed. It makes the neck look super thick, but it was just the artist's interpretation.
Second, penguins. Pterosaurs have big, hollow heads and skeletons that look like they should have flown. The same can be said of penguins.
- Look just because we haven't found any air fossils yet
- I recall reading something about a similar Dino that didn't so much fly and ran and glided instead. I wonder if it's similar to what this big boy did.
- But penguins are flightless birds? I could imagine the big guy being a flightless bird with vestigial wings, like ostriches.
  The strong head, small body with all four extremities being used to stand seems more evolved for walking to me (I know next to nothing about fossil reconstruction though)
- Well hollow bones in birds aren't for flying but for breathing purposes so your second point isn't exactly right.
Almost the entire weight of the animal on the drawing is between its wings, and by that human there, there are more than 10 m of wingspan. Many small aiplanes are smaller than it.
Pterosaurs had a very unusual body shape that is nothing like birds.
you can make anything fly if you strap a big enough rocket to it.
S'why I never understood the expression 'when pigs fly'. Like... do you really want me to abuse a pig?
- Just look at the F-117A. That thing has the aerodynamic profile of a school bus made of cinder blocks. It "flies" because it goes fast enough to just about hit escape velocity.
My very quick research leads me to believe they have very little skeletal remains that they used to guess what this guy must have looked like. I could be wrong

Idk I’m still partial to quetzacoaltus!

They're first cousins: Quetzalcoatlinae
Apparently Arambourgiania are also Quetzal's sibling.
Fucking quesadilla birds...

kitty : 3

Pelicans for humans

Hatzegopteryx

HatzeGOPteryx

GOP

What, did this thing hate women?

Pteryx means wings, hence the joke doesn’t fly.

Woah - I had never heard of the Hatzegopteryx. I spent some time today watching videos of this guy today (and its relatives, Quetzalcoatlus and Argentinosaurus). They are really cool.

I know that there is a lot of arguments about what dinosaurs actually looked like - I hope that in the videos they make these guys scarier than they actually were... This video is especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYniD_MQ7Rg

Personally, this style (from a great PBS Eons video) is my favorite interpretation:

And artists apparently like to emphasize that these guys could eat small dinosaurs!

I am going to be that guy and point out that pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, unless you consider primates to be squirrels cause we are distantly related. Also fun fact pterosaurs may have had a type of feathering which either means that the ancestors of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs had feathers or it evolved at least twice. And on a similar thing of body coverings, stem mamals/proto-mammals had fur before the dinosaurs ever evolved.
- I am going to be that guy and point out that pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, unless you consider primates to be squirrels cause we are distantly related.
  Ah, thank you for being that guy! Now I know 😄
  Also fun fact pterosaurs may have had a type of feathering which either means that the ancestors of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs had feathers or it evolved at least twice. And on a similar thing of body coverings, stem mamals/proto-mammals had fur before the dinosaurs ever evolved.
  Can the feathers and fur (or their impression) be preserved for millions of years in some types of fossilization? Or is the presence of these concluded from the bone structures, fossilized skin, or other not so direct pieces of evidence? And, is any direct evidence of color preserved? No pressure to answer, I am just wondering out loud.

Minnesota's true cryptid

hezezodxkdieutpuyrex

im just gonna call it big bird