Peter Kloess’s research reveals how birds with a wingspan of 21 feet used to rule the Antarctic peninsula.
Key points:
1. Research shows giant birds existed in Antarctica for 60 million years.
2. Birds with a wingspan of 21 feet roamed around in Antarctica.
3. Study reveals Antarctica would have been warmer 50 million years ago.
Peter Kloess’ study on giant birds reveals some shocking details:
In the 1980s, paleontologists at the University of California Riverside visited Seymour Island, a part of an island chain withinside the Antarctic Peninsula. They introduced domestic some of the fossils — which include the foot bone and partial jaw bone of prehistoric birds. For decades, the fossils sat in a museum at the University of California Berkeley — till a graduate scholar named Peter Kloess began out poking round in 2015.
Biggest bird used to exist for 60 million years:
In a observe posted Monday withinside the journal “Scientific Reports,” Kloess diagnosed the birds as pelagornithids, a collection of predators that roamed the Earth’s southern oceans for at least 60 million years. They are recognized as “bony-toothed” birds due to their sharp enamel and lengthy beaks, which helped them grasp fish and squid from the ocean. The birds had been huge, with wingspans achieving as much as 21 feet (6.4 meters). And the precise people that the fossils belong to can also additionally had been the largest of them all, the observe suggests. Using the fossils’ length and measurements, the researchers had been capable of estimate the relaxation of the people’s lengths.
Antarctica was hotter some 50 million years ago, reveals a study:
The observe additionally painted a portrait of what Antarctica may have appeared like 50 million years ago. It could have been plenty hotter lower back then, domestic to land mammals just like the remote household of sloths and anteaters. Antarctic birds additionally flourished there, which include early penguin species and the extinct household of geese and ostriches. Pelagornithids could have existed in this atmosphere along with the others.