For years, the remains sat in the museum at the University of California, Berkeley – until a graduate student named Peter Klose began making a splash in 2015.
The birds were huge, with wingspan of 21 feet (6.4 m). Studies suggest that fossils are related and that fossils may be the largest of them.
Using fossil sizes and measurements, the researchers were able to estimate the size of the remaining individuals. The bird with the bones of the legs is “the largest known specimen for the complete extinction group of pelagornithids,” while the bird with the jawbone is “larger than the largest known skeleton of the group of toothed birds, if not larger.”
“These Antarctic fossils … probably represent not only the largest flying birds of the Eocene, but also some of the largest endangered birds that have ever lived.”
Klaus and other researchers have determined that the foot bone is 50 million years old, and the jaw bone is about 40 million years old – there is evidence that birds originated in the Cenozoic Era, the planet then struck Earth and wiped out almost all dinosaurs.
Ashley Past, study author at the San Diego Natural History Museum, added:
Like albatrosses, pelagornithids travel extensively around the world, and can fly over the ocean for up to a week. At the time, oceans were dominated by whales and seals – meaning easy hunting for giant birds.
“Large (pelagornithids) are twice the size of albatrosses, and these bone-toothed birds would be terrifying predators who were at the top of their ecosystem,” said Thomas Stidham, co-author of the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Said. In Beijing.
The study also paints a picture of what Antarctica once looked like to millions of people. It would have been very hot at the time, home to land mammals like the distant relatives of sloths and anteaters. Antarctic birds also thrived there, including early penguin species and extinct relatives of ducks and ostriches. Pelagornithids would exist in this ecosystem along with others, potentially competing for fodder and space for structures.
“My guess is that (Antarctica) was a rich and diverse place,” said Thomas Mars, senior curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. “We’ve got a percentage of what lives there.”
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