Quetzalcoatlus - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Quetzalcoatlus has been featured in documentaries, both in cinemas and on television, since the 1980s. The Smithsonian project to build a working model of Q. northropi was the subject of the 1986 IMAX documentary On the Wing, shown at the National Air and space museum in Washington, D.C.. It has also been featured in television programs such as the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999 and Dangerous, Ltd.'s Clash of the Dinosaurs in 2009. The later program featured traits invented by the producers to heighten entertainment value, including a depiction of Quetzalcoatlus with the ability to use ultraviolet vision to locate dinosaur urine when hunting in the air. It was also depicted in the 2011 documentary March of the Dinosaurs, where it was erroneously depicted as a clawless, bipedal scavenger, and in the 2009 series Animal Armageddon, where it was correctly portrayed with pycnofibres. In the "Return to Jurassic Park" bonus feature of the 2011 Blu-ray release of the Jurassic Park film series, John R. Horner describes Quetzalcoatlus as the pterosaur that most accurately represented and matched the size of the pterosaurs that are featured in the films.

In June 2010, several life-sized models of Q. northropi were put on display on London's South Bank as the centerpiece exhibit for the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary exhibition. The models, which included both flying and standing individuals with wingspans of 30 feet (9.1 m), were intended to help build interest in science among the public. The models were created by scientists from the University of Portsmouth, including David Martill, Bob Loveridge and Mark Witton, and engineers Bob and Jack Rushton from Griffon Hoverwork. The display presented to the public the most accurate pterosaur models constructed at the time, taking into account anatomical and footprint evidence based on skeletal and trace fossils from related pterosaurs.