1. Determine a suitable place for installation. Make sure the
ceiling bracket is positioned far enough away from any
walls or other obstacles so that the pterosaur does not
crash into anything when it ies around in its circular path.
Your Quetzalcoatlus is ready to
y! Turn on the motor with the
switch, making sure to keep your
hands and other body parts away from
the propeller. Pull the pterosaur a little to
the side and then “throw” it in a clockwise
direction to start it along its circular path. The
pterosaur will propel itself around and around on a
circular path. It ies only clockwise. Make sure
nothing gets in its ight path at any time.
Pterosaurs were the rst ying vertebrates. Some were hardly bigger than a sparrow,
while others had a wingspan of up to 20 meters (66 feet). Their wings had no
embrane similar to that of a modern-day bat.
their head, the function of which is still
mably for steering. Their bones were hollow
but strengthened by bridges and
sponge-like structures — thus being
All of the pterosaurs known today
were meat eaters. The smaller, tailed
types were presumably skilled yers,
able to catch lake and ocean sh in
ight with their sharp beaks. Others
stood in shallow water pecking on
crustaceans and mollusks.
2. Tie one end of the cable to the
hanger with at least three very
3. Guide the free end of the cable
through the hole in the ceiling bracket
and insert the hanger into the hole in
the center of the bracket.
5. Place the ceiling bracket in the
desired position on the ceiling
and with a large screwdriver
(preferably powered) screw in
the three large screws (part
15) to hold the bracket in
place. Make sure the bracket is
securely in place by tugging on
4. Tie the other end of the cable to the
hook with at least three very tight knots.
Trim the loose ends with scissors.
6. Use the hook to connect the
cable to the loop on the back
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS TAKE TO THE SKIES!
PTEROSAURS — FLYING PREHISTORIC CREATURES
HOW ARE PTEROSAURS LIKE BIRDS?
animals and plants that no longer exist
today. The dinosaurs became extinct
millions of years ago. But some traces of
their bodies, such as bones, skin
impressions, and footprints, have been
preserved in stone. These are called
fossils. Researchers dig up these
discoveries, study them, and compare
them to others. In this way, scientists
gured out about 200 years ago that
some of these fossil remains came from
enormous animals. Before then, people had thought they were the remains of
IMPORTANT! An adult must fasten the ceiling bracket to the ceiling
to install the ying pterosaur before it can be used. Scan this QR
code for an installation and ying video.
The spinning propeller pushes the model
forward. Since the cable keeps the model
tethered to a central point, the model
cannot y o course; it stays ying in a
continuous circular motion.
To understand how propellers work, let’s
rst examine another common feature of
ying things: the wing. Wings generate a
liing force in air. Air is a mixture of gases.
The molecules in air are always moving
around and they are always being pulled
toward Earth by gravity. Air pressure is the
result of all these moving particles pushing
on each other and all the things under and
Air behaves like a uid and obeys the
physical laws of uids. To understand how
wings work, the most important principle
of uids to know is that the faster uids
move, the lower their pressure. This is
called Bernoulli’s principle aer the
scientist who came up with it. Airplane
wings are designed to take advantage of
Bernoulli’s principle to li a plane upward.
The cross section of a wing has a top
surface that is curved and therefore longer
than its bottom surface. Air owing over
the top has to travel farther, so it moves
faster. As Bernoulli’s principle states,
faster moving air has a lower pressure and
slower moving air has a higher pressure.
The high air pressure under the wing
pushes the wing upward and the low
pressure above sucks it upward. This is
called li. Li is always perpendicular to
the direction of the airow.
A propeller works like a spinning wing.
Imagine taking two (or more) wings,
sticking them on a central axis opposite
one another, and spinning the axis. The
wings would spiral through the air and
create low pressure in front of them and
high pressure behind them, and thus pull
the propeller forward. The wings
of a propeller, called blades, are
angled so they cut into the air more.
Just like they screw through the air,
propellers can also work in another uid:
You can stop it at any time by carefully catching the
cord, keeping your hand away from the propeller,
and turning o the motor with the switch.
Taller than a girae, with a wingspan as wide as a school
bus, the Quetzalcoatlus is the largest known ying creature
of all time. Like other pterosaurs, the Quetzalcoatlus had
wings that stretched from its ankles to its extremely long
fourth ngers. Some scientists believe that these massive
wings, along with hollow bones and a powerful launch
system, helped the Quetzalcoatlus y for thousands of
miles without stopping, while moving as fast as a car on the
highway. The Quetzalcoatlus had a large pointed skull and
big eye sockets, indicating that it was likely intelligent and
had good eyesight. Although its jaws were toothless, the
Quetzalcoatlus’s dominant size allowed it to pick up and eat
small animals while it was walking on land. The massive
ying creature and its descendants might be dominating
Earth’s skies today were it not for a single rock. The
Quetzalcoatlus is believed to have died out around 65
million years ago during the great Cretaceous-Tertiary — or
K-T — extinction, when much of the life on Earth was wiped
out aer a huge asteroid slammed into it.
You may have heard: birds descended from dinosaurs. While
this is true, and while birds and the Quetzalcoatlus share
some similarities, the creatures you see ying around
Earth today are not related to the Quetzalcoatlus. Birds
actually evolved from a group of two-legged dinosaurs
called theropods, which include the Tyrannosaurus
rex and smaller velociraptors. Unlike most birds
today, which are bipeds like theropods, the
Quetzalcoatlus was a quadruped, meaning it
walked on four limbs when on the ground. It is
believed that the Quetzalcoatlus was covered in a downy fur,
not feathers. While both types of creatures ew, the
Quetzalcoatlus likely didn’t do much wing apping, but
rather relied on soaring on wind thermals. But
Quetzalcoatlus did have something in common with birds:
both types of animals are warm-blooded, meaning their
bodies can generate heat internally, independent of the
outside temperature. Another key dierence: birds managed
to survive the K-T extinction of 65 million years ago, while
pterosaurs, including the Quetzalcoatlus, did not.
