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Big Birds

ramonmercado

CyberPunk
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Eblana
About time such a topic was started and heres a really Big Bird to get your teeth into.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100918210719.htm
Fossil of Giant Bony-Toothed Bird from Chile Sets Wingspan Record

Artist's perception of Pelagornis chilensis in life. (Credit: Artwork by Carlos Anzures)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2010) — A newly discovered skeleton of an ancient seabird from northern Chile provides evidence that giant birds were soaring the skies there 5-10 million years ago. The wing bones of the animal exceed those of all other birds in length; its wingspan would have been at least 5.2 m (17 ft.). This is the largest safely established wingspan for a bird. Other, larger estimates for fossil birds have been based on much less secure evidence.

The new bird belongs to a group known as pelagornithids, informally referred to as bony-toothed birds. They are characterized by their long, slender beaks that bear many spiny, tooth-like projections. Such 'teeth' likely would have been used to capture slippery prey in the open ocean, such as fish and squid.

“Bird watching in Chile would be thrilling if birds with more than five meter wingspans and huge pseudoteeth were still alive,” said Dr. Gerald Mayr of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in Germany, lead author on the study

Fossils of bony-toothed birds are found on all continents, but such remains are usually fragmentary. This is because most birds have fragile bones that often do not survive the fossilization process. Only a single partial skeleton of a bony-toothed bird was known prior to discovery of the new Chilean specimen, and it is badly crushed. The new specimen, which is 70% complete and uncrushed, provides important new information about the size and anatomy of these strange birds. It is the largest bony-toothed bird discovered so far. It also represents a new species named after its country of origin: Pelagornis chilensis.

“Although these animals would have looked like creatures from Jurassic Park, they are true birds, and their last representatives may have coexisted with the earliest humans in North Africa,” said Mayr.

Knowledge of the maximum size that can be reached by a flying bird is important for understanding the physics behind how birds fly. This new fossil may therefore help scientists better appreciate physical and anatomical constraints in very large birds.

“This specimen greatly improves our knowledge of the appearance of one of the most spectacular and fascinating animals that crossed the skies,” said the study’s co-author, Dr. David Rubilar of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile.

A life-size reconstruction of the skeleton will be on exhibition in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
 
Giant fossil shows huge birds lived among dinosaurs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14466814

The fossilised jawbone is nearly twice the length of that of an ostrich, the largest bird found on Earth today

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An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan is further evidence that giant birds roamed - or flew above - the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Writing in Biology Letters, researchers say the new species, Samrukia nessovi, had a skull some 30cm long.

If flightless, the bird would have been 2-3m tall; if it flew, it may have had a wingspan of 4m.

The find is only the second bird of such a size in the Cretaceous geologic period, and the first in Asia.

The only other evidence of a bird of such a size during the period was a fossilised spinal bone found in France and reported in a 1995 paper in Nature.

Sharing space
An overwhelming majority of the birds known from the period would have been about crow-sized, but Dr Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth said that a second find of an evidently different species suggests that large birds were common at the time.

"This fossil is only known from its lower jaw, so unfortunately we can't say anything at all with certainty about the shape and form of the whole animal.

"If it was flightless and sort of ostrich-shaped, it would have been maybe 2-3m tall and somewhere over 50kg," he explained to BBC News. "If it was a flying animal, then maybe it was shaped like a big albatross or a condor."

Dr Naish also wondered about the dinosaurs with which the enormous birds shared their space.

"I think the really interesting thing is that they're living alongside the big dinosaurs we know were around at the time: big tyrannosaurs, long-necked sauropods, duck-billed dinosaurs," he said. "That opens up loads of questions about ecological interactions that we can only speculate about.

"People have said there weren't big birds when there were big pterosaurs, but now we know there were."
 
The fossilised jaw is suspected to be that of a female as it was still chattering. :D
 
Giant Eocene bird was 'gentle herbivore', study finds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/20413665
By Michelle Warwicker
BBC Nature

The giant flightless Diatryma: unequipped to be a carnivore?

Footprints believed to have been made by the giant bird Diatryma indicate that it was a "gentle herbivore" and not a fierce carnivore, scientists say.

A team of researchers from Washington, US, examined tracks uncovered in a landslide in 2009.

Previous investigations have suggested the giant bird was a carnivorous predator or scavenger.

But the absence of raptor-like claws in the footprints supports the theory that Diatryma was not a meat-eater.

Continue reading the main story
Meet the beasts of the Eocene

Watch fearsome pig-like entelodonts in battle

See what a bird eating a horse might look like

Meet the ferocious ancestor of the whale

What exactly was an Andrewsarchus?

Measuring 7ft (2.13m) tall and with a huge head and beak, the giant flightless bird Diatryma (believed by some experts to belong to the genus Gastornis) is commonly portrayed as a fierce predator in both scientific works and popular media.

The animal is frequently thought as "the bird that replaced dinosaurs as the top predator", said geologist and team member George Mustoe, from Western Washington University in Bellingham, US.

"Let's be honest: scary, fierce meat-eaters attract a lot more attention than gentle herbivores."

The study, published in the journal Paleontology, analysed a set of footprints made 55.8 to 48.6 million years ago in the Lower Eocene. Preserved in sandstone, the prints formed part of the Chuckanut Formation in northwest Washington, US.

The team concluded that the multiple, well-preserved tracks were most likely to have been made by Diatryma.

That would make them the only known footprints left behind by this giant bird, and they provide new evidence about what it ate.


Scientists hid the footprints from fossil hunters until they could be flown to safety
"[The tracks] clearly show that the animals did not have long talons, but rather short toenails," said David Tucker, from Western Washington University, who also worked on the study.

"This argues against an animal that catches prey and uses claws to hold it down. Carnivorous birds all have sharp, long talons."

Early palaeontologists studying Diatryma fossils concluded that the giant bird was a predator because of its size, huge head and large beak.

The first Diatryma skeleton found in the US was preserved alongside bones of tiny horses and other small mammals. Some scientists posited that these must have been the bird's prey, explained Mr Mustoe.

However, Diatryma also had relatively short legs, leading others to suggest it could not have run fast enough to capture prey, and was therefore a herbivore.

Further analysis has shown that the bird did not have a hook on the end of its beak - a feature found in all raptors which helps them to hold prey and tear into carcasses.


Diatryma (or Gastornis) is commonly portrayed as a top predator that devoured small mammals
The research team's conclusion that the animal did not have talons "[adds] ammunition to the herbivory diet hypothesis", Mr Tucker told BBC Nature.

"A more likely scenario [than being a carnivore] would be a gentle Diatryma that used its beak to harvest foliage, fruits, and seeds from the subtropical forests that it inhabited," Mr Mustoe added.

The team believe that the similarities of Diatryma to those of the carnivorous South American Phorusracids or "terror birds" led early palaeontologists to assume that the two were ecologically similar.

According to the study: "The common belief that Diatryma... was likewise a carnivore is more a result of guilt by association than actual anatomical evidence".

Join BBC Nature on Facebook and Twitter @BBCNature.
 
Exceptionally preserved fossil gives voice to ancient terror bird
Date:
April 9, 2015

Source:
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

Summary:
A new species of South American fossil terror bird called Llallawavis scagliai or, 'Scaglia's Magnificent Bird' is shedding light on the diversity of the group and how these giant extinct predators interacted with their environment. The new species is the most complete terror bird ever discovered, with more than 90 percent of the skeleton exquisitely preserved.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409182945.htm
 
I demand that you edit a picture of the Sesame Street character into the opening post of this thread!
 
Huge royal albatross chokes to death by swallowing seal shark

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” says Alan Tennyson, a curator at the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.

He’s referring to an incredible find – a large albatross that appears to have died after swallowing a shark whole.

This northern royal albatross, Diomedea sanfordi, washed ashore on the coast at Wellington where it was found byHokimate Harwood, a researcher at the museum.

But it wasn’t until staff inspected the specimen in the lab that they noticed something fishy – a shark tail poking out of the bird’s neck, to be precise.

“We were really surprised to see the shark tail projecting out of the bird’s neck, but we were even more surprised when we realised that the whole shark was still intact inside the albatross,” says Tennyson.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...gn=twitter&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2014-GLOBAL-twitter
 
Fortunately this was a friendly big bird.

The eagle has landed - not once, but twice.

Two American football fans got the surprise of their lives on Saturday when a North American bald eagle went rogue at a college football game in Texas, and decided to perch in the crowd. The sizeable bird, which goes by the name of Clark, was apparently meant to fly around the stadium during the national anthem, before a 90,000-strong crowd watched the Cotton Bowl, the college football playoff semi-final between Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Clemson Tigers. But instead of landing near his handler, he made straight for Notre Dame fan Albert Armas. Mr Armas, 42, later admitted he was scared when the huge bird took hold of his shoulder.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46715373
 
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