Tired of reading about politics and the decline of the republic? Here’s a palate refresher, and something of a mind-blower:

The one and only known Pelagornis sandersi fossil’s wings stretch a whopping 6.4 meters (or 20.99 feet) ”“ about twice that of the royal albatross, among the largest living birds capable of taking to the skies. It sported strange tooth-like cones that protruded from its beak. The remarkable bones were actually discovered in 1983 near Charleston Airport in South Carolina, but they remained hidden in a drawer at the Charleston Museum until study author Daniel Ksepka, a paleontologist then at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, came across them about three decades later.

“I was not expecting this bird when I went down there,” said Ksepka, now at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut

Let us pause for a moment and contemplate the understated beauty of that sentence: I was not expecting this bird when I went down there.

Indeed. It was thought that such a wingspan was not possible in a bird, but apparently there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The above article says 21 feet for the bird’s wingspan, but this one says it was 24 feet. The bird presented scientists with a problem: how did it fly?:

Even though it would have weighed up to 180lbs (81.5kg), the researchers said they have no doubt P sandersi flew.

Its paper-thin hollow bones, stumpy legs and wing shape made it similar to birds that fly today, and this would have made it awkward when on land…

But, because it exceeded the 15ft (4.5 metre) wingspan previous studies have claimed is the maximum for birds to fly, the researchers were unsure how it managed to take off and stay aloft.

Scientists think it took off by “taking a running jump downhill into a headwind,” and after that it flew like a glider.

But here’s a creature that makes Pelagornis look like a piker:
Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur that may have had a wingspan of at least 33-36 feet. Did it fly? Scientists are still duking it out on that one, but the majority answer in the affirmative.