An Ice Age bird that weighed twice as much as an ostrich became adapted to water, says a team of researchers who recently studied fossils of creatures that went extinct about 45,000 years ago. Based on the bones of Genyornisnewtoni found in Lake Callabonna in South Australia, the animal weighed about 230 kilos, making it five times as heavy as the fearsome southern cassowary. The recent trove of remains, including a nearly foot-long skull, was found in 2019.
The only other known skull of Genyornis was found in 1913 and was badly damaged. 128 years later, new fossils – and new technology – allowed a research team to draw more detailed conclusions about the life and times of this giant bird. Their research is published today in Historical Biology.
Lake Callabonna is “a bit of a megafauna necropolis,” says Jacob Blokland, a paleontologist at Flinders University and co-author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo. “This site has been known since the late 19th century, but has probably been part of indigenous knowledge for much longer.”
“At the time, Genyornis was thought to be a ‘struthious bird’, more related to cassowaries and emus, so subsequent reconstructions were influenced by this,” Blokland added.
The team’s research has turned these conclusions on their head. The bird’s upper jaw was long like a parrot’s, but shaped like a goose’s (hence the nickname “giga goose,” as mentioned in a Taylor & Francis story). Edition). It had a large braincase and a casque, an enlargement of the bone on top of its head. Although the animal has been compared to large birds because of its size, recent research shows that the animal was morphologically similar to modern waterfowl such as the South American. shouters.
“The new skull material for this Genyornis has revealed a goose beak and several specialist features of the skull associated with the bird submerging its skull in water. This bird must have foraged in the water at least some of the time, perhaps on soft aquatic weeds or new shoots of plants. It also has adaptations to its hind legs for traveling over hard ground, and may have traveled from lake to lake, eating fruit and the like along the way.”
Genyornis became extinct about 45,000 years ago, meaning it shared the Earth with anatomically modern humans and even Neanderthals (although these were not in Australia). There is no archaeological or anthropological evidence that humans and Genyornis interacted, although they lived in the same area at the same time.
“We cannot say for certain why Genyornis went extinct, as it is likely a complex interaction of multiple variables,” Phoebe McInerney, a paleontologist at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study, said in an email to Gizmodo. “However, since the skull shows that these birds adapted to life in and around water, this suggests that they lived and depended on semi-aquatic environments.”
“During the time that Genyornis lived, South Australia’s inland lakes went through phases of drought and slowly transitioned to the saline and dry state they are in today,” McInerney added. “This would likely have contributed to Genyornis becoming locally extinct in this region.”
Although the cause of its disappearance remains uncertain, the bird’s morphology and its ecological niche are now much clearer. More fossils could further develop paleontologists’ understanding of this giant goose-like forager.
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