Largest flying animal in history identified: study

PARIS: Scientists on Tuesday unveiled a new species pterosaur, the plane-sized reptiles that lorded over primeval skies above T-rex, Triceratops and other dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous.

With a wingspan of ten metres and weighing 250 kilos, Cryodrakon boreas rivals another pterosaur as the largest flying animal of all time, researchers reported in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"This is a cool discovery," said David Hone, lead author of the study and a researcher at Queen Mary University in London. "It is great that we can identify Cryodrakon as being distinct from Quetzalcoatlus," the other giant pterosaur for which it was initially mistaken, he said in a statement. C. boreas was hiding in plain sight.

Its remains were first discovered more than 30 years ago in Alberta, Canada, yet elicited scant excitement because of the misclassification.