Quetzalcoatlus

***Quetzalcoatlus*** is a giant azhdarchid pterosaur from the late cretaceous of North America.

## Characteristics

*Quetzalcoatlus* are tall, slender animals, covered in brown pycnofibres. A light yellow crest sits atop its head, and a similarly colored keratinous beak makes up the mouth. The beak connects to a red gular pouch on the top of the neck. The wings of a *Quetzalcoatlus* are furless and covered in tough leather, allowing for better protection than the softer skin underneath its pycnofibres. Within its beak is a barbed, prehensile tongue that it can use to manipulate objects as well as hold down and pull apart prey. The beak, sharpened with age, is even deadlier than the tongue, and can easily impale prey along with allowing fencing in intraspecies conflict.

*Quetzalcoatlus* are social animals, living in flocks of at least three individuals and hunting together. The pterosaurs hunt via flying over areas of the floodplains or other areas with minimal trees, laqnding only when they find prey and then scouring the undergrowth until they find something large enough to kill. Once one animal makes a kill, it will share it with its flock, with smaller animals this is done via either grabbing the prey and dropping it mid-air of one animal holding the food while the others tear the limbs off of it. Other feeding habits include raiding the nests of smaller animals such as *Deinonychus* and bullying these predators off of their kills, the Father T. rex even being pushed off his kill in at least one instance.

   *Quetzalcoatlus* can travel hundreds of miles a day, and most flocks use this to spread out their nesting sites to different mountain sanctuaries. Each egg clutch can hold as many as 40 eggs, and each infant is fully capable of hunting from a young age. Young animals can easily hunt small animals such as lizards and rodents, and as they grow older they have been observed skim fishing, although this becomes impossible when near adult size.

## History

### Encountering the Dogs of War

A flock of *Quetzalcoatlus* were brought into Vulture Valley in Vietnam by the failure of the first USSR particle collider. Within a year, the head of the USSR presence in the Valley, Grigory Borodin, had killed all but three of the animals that had remained in the valley while the others escaped into other countries.

A year after their introduction, The Dogs of War were wading through a field of elephant grass when the three remaining *Quetzalcoatlus* landed in the field and began stalking them. The pterosaurs would search for the squad before finding Tolstoy Asimov, brutally stabbing him and eating him alive. Nikita and Sergei Medvedev fled the field, killing one of the pterosaurs in the process, its corpse seemingly being fed on by a pack of *Deinonychus*.

A day later, the remaining *Quetzalcoatlus* attacked Jericho's Base, slaughtering almost all of the soldiers there and providing Sergei the cover to find the captured Nikita, nearly killing him before he found cover where Nikita was being held. The pterosaurs left after eating their fill.

### Eradication

Another year later, Stalker Force went out on a helicopter hunting for the remaining mated pair of *Quetzalcoatlus*, in the valley using a beheaded water buffalo as bait. The female eventually took the bait, swooping down for the carcass before being mortally wounded by Syd Kinane with the helicopter's mounted turret. The corpse would fall into a waterway, where several bull *Kaprosuchus* scavenged it. The male returned after hearing his mate's cries, fighting the crocodilians off of the carcass before scaring them away by killing the largest individual via strangling it with his tongue. Syd watched this spectacle with awe, and decided he would be the one to end the pterosaur's reign, firing at it and forcing it to abandon his mate's corpse retreat to its nest. Stalker Force would follow the male to his nest, with Xavier Wise and James Molnar would considerably injure the animal, even causing it to break its keratin beak when it attempted to escape through the back entrance, where Konnor Young and Syd fired on it, mortally wounding it and Syd decapitating it. After finding no eggs within the nest, Stalker Force would return to their base and had the head taxidermized.