{"id":13332,"date":"2013-11-10T10:40:35","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/?p=13332"},"modified":"2013-11-10T10:45:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:45:52","slug":"who-said-fictional-kaiju-are-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/10\/who-said-fictional-kaiju-are-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Said Fictional Kaiju Are Unbelievable?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some of Godzilla&#8217;s mates may have been strange &#8212; and the monsters that Ultraman regularly wrestles with may cross the &#8220;strange&#8221; boundary into outright bizarre &#8212; but the real-world <em>Quetzalcoatlus northropi<\/em> &#8212; a winged critter from the Cretaceous period &#8212; shows yet again that the giants of our past were more than capable of boundary-pushing strangeness in their own right.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Arambourgiania-vs-giraffe-vs-the-Disacknowledgement-Witton-Low-Res.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13333 alignnone\" alt=\"Arambourgiania-vs-giraffe-vs-the-Disacknowledgement-Witton-Low-Res\" src=\"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Arambourgiania-vs-giraffe-vs-the-Disacknowledgement-Witton-Low-Res.jpg\" width=\"660\" height=\"763\" srcset=\"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Arambourgiania-vs-giraffe-vs-the-Disacknowledgement-Witton-Low-Res.jpg 660w, https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Arambourgiania-vs-giraffe-vs-the-Disacknowledgement-Witton-Low-Res-259x300.jpg 259w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At nearly 5 metres tall [16 feet], with a wingspan of about 10 metres [33 feet], and with a beak bigger than the average human, this member of the\u00a0pterosaur family would have been a monster not to be trifled with.<\/p>\n<p>Read about it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2013\/11\/absurd-creature-of-the-week-quetz\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was of course named after the mythical Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who is most famous in cinematic terms for his titular role in Larry Cohen&#8217;s wonderfully eccentric <strong>Q \u2013 the Winged Serpent<\/strong> (1982):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/q5.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13334 alignnone\" alt=\"q5\" src=\"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/q5.jpg\" width=\"846\" height=\"458\" srcset=\"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/q5.jpg 846w, https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/q5-300x162.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 846px) 100vw, 846px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of course, <em>Quetzalcoatlus<\/em> probably glided rather than actually flew like Q, but hey! If that thing was coming at you from out of the sky, you probably wouldn&#8217;t be worrying too much about the details.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2013\/11\/absurd-creature-of-the-week-quetz\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wired<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of Godzilla&#8217;s mates may have been strange &#8212; and the monsters that Ultraman regularly wrestles with may cross the &#8220;strange&#8221; boundary into outright bizarre &#8212; but the real-world Quetzalcoatlus northropi &#8212; a winged critter from the Cretaceous period &#8212; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/10\/who-said-fictional-kaiju-are-weird\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[109,44,75],"tags":[1271,1269,1268,1267,1270],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13337,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13332\/revisions\/13337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}