[ad_1]
Fossils recently analyzed from Antarctica could represent an extinct species of giant bird with a wingspan of over 20 feet.
By comparison, the largest modern bird, the wandering albatross, has a wingspan of just 11 feet six inches.
Called pelagorniths, the ancient birds flew over Earth’s oceans more than 40 million years ago.
Researchers who examined a fossil foot bone and a preserved fragment of the jaw determined that the species lived longer than previously thought and was larger than the largest known birds ever recorded: the fossils were discovered in the 1980s but they remained unexamined for decades.
Scroll down for the video
A 50-million-year-old fossil of foot bone of a pelagornith, a member of an extinct group of giant birds. Avian predators patrolled the oceans with a wingspan of up to 21 feet, shrinking the wingspan by 11 and a half feet of today’s largest bird, the wandering albatross
They were part of a mine of specimens collected by paleontologists from the University of California on Seymour Island, off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the mid-1980s.
Peter Kloess first came across fossils in 2015 when he arrived at UC Berkeley as a Ph.D. candidate in Integrative Biology.
“I love going to collections and finding treasures there,” Kloess said. “Someone called me a museum rat and I take it as a badge of honor. I like running around, finding things that people overlook. ‘
By reviewing the original notes, Kloess determined that a fossil of a foot bone, known as the tarsometatarsus, was much older than originally thought – from around 50 million years ago instead of 40 million.
The pelagornith (center) hovered over the Earth’s oceans more than 40 million years ago. With a wingspan of over 20 feet, they may be the largest flying bird ever
An intact section of the lower jaw of a pelagornitid dating back to about 40 million years ago. The bony protrusions on the jaw, known as pseudotes, would have been up to an inch tall when the bird was alive and its skull up to two feet long
During that period, known as the Eocene, Antarctica had a much warmer climate and was home to numerous mammals and birds, including the first relatives of the sloth, ostrich, and penguin.
Pelagornithids have been part of that ecosystem for over 10 million years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports.
It is believed that birds, whose wingspan reaches 21 feet, can fly over the ocean for weeks at a time.
In a lifestyle likely similar to living albatrosses, the extinct giant pelagornites, with their very long-tipped wings, would have flown widely over the ancient open seas, which were yet to be dominated by whales and seals, in search of squid, fish, and other seafood, ”said co-author Thomas Stidham of the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
According to Smithsonian magazine, their size places them at the upper limit of how large a bird can become and still fly, making them a good candidate for the largest birds ever to take off from the ground.
Pelagornithidae are often known as bony-toothed birds but, in reality, their pseudotes acted more like claws, helping them pull squid and fish from the water
A fossil of a smaller pelagornith dates back to 62 million years ago, but the foot fossil indicates these larger varieties arose soon after life rebounded from the mass extinction that killed dinosaurs 65 million years ago .
“The extreme and gigantic size of these extinct birds is unsurpassed in ocean habitats,” said co-author Ashley Poust of the San Diego Natural History Museum.
The last known pelagornitid dates back to 2.5 million years ago, when an ice age on Earth began.
Due to the sharp-looking projections on their jaws, pelagorniths are often known as bony-toothed birds.
In reality, the protrusions, known as pseudotes, did not help chew – they were more like nails, helping birds to pluck squid and fish from the water.
The pseudote on the lower jaw examined by Kloess and his colleagues dates back to about 40 million years ago.
They would have been up to an inch tall when the bird was alive and its skull would have been up to two feet long.
“These bony-toothed birds would have been formidable predators that evolved to be at the top of their ecosystem,” Stidham said.
According to Kloess, the new findings illustrate “that birds evolved to truly gigantic sizes relatively quickly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and ruled the oceans for millions of years.”
.
[ad_2]
Source link
