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from the try-stuffing-that-into-the-oven dept.
This Was the World's Largest Bird. It Weighed as Much as a Dinosaur.
The world's largest bird — a newly identified species of elephant bird — weighed as much as a dinosaur when it strutted around Madagascar more than 1,000 years ago, a new study finds.
This monster bird is now extinct, but it weighed as much as 1,760 lbs. (800 kilograms), or about as much as seven modern ostriches when it was alive. It also stood a whopping as 9.8 feet (3 meters) high — a good 8 inches (20 centimeters) taller than an ostrich. And, also like the ostrich, this elephant bird couldn't fly.
[...] V. titan is so big, that its average weight of 1,430 lbs. (650 kg) is comparable to Europasaurus, a small sauropod (a long-necked dinosaur), which weighed about 1,500 lbs (690 kg), Hansford and study co-researcher Samuel Turvey, a professor at the Zoological Society of London's Institute of Zoology, wrote in the study.
When the herbivorous elephant birds went extinct about 1,000 years ago — largely because of human hunters — the Madagascar ecosystem changed. Plants that depended on the birds to eat and disperse seeds floundered.
Unexpected diversity within the extinct elephant birds (Aves: Aepyornithidae) and a new identity for the world's largest bird (open, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.181295) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:36PM (2 children)
The trex quacked like a duck: https://nerdist.com/dinosaurs-didnt-roar-they-cooed-or-quacked-like-ducks-says-new-study/ [nerdist.com]
Also, Id say any animal that cant fly isnt a real bird.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 27 2018, @01:18AM (1 child)
What??!! As a New Zealander you're slandering my national symbol.
Alright, it acts like a shrew or something, and almost doesn't even have wings, but come on! It kind of does have feathers. (Kind of).
That should count surely?
I am always interested in these types of birds, because New Zealand has no native land mammals at all, so birds evolved to fill the niches that mammals fill everywhere else.
Kiwis, as noted above are little insectivores living on the forest floor. The Moas were the equivalent of deer or cattle, and browsed the forests.
The apex predator was an Eagle with a 3 metre wingspan.
The rodent equivalent is a primitive grasshopper though. About the same size as a mouse, which is fun.
Unfortunately, about 600 years ago people arrived and bought dogs and rats. Between the three species, we've managed to wipe most of the birds out, which is a shame.
Carry on everyone, as I continue to mourn the Moa.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:04AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves