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Cygnus falconeri is an extinct, very large swan known from Middle Pleistocene-aged deposits from Malta and Sicily. Its dimensions are described as exceeding those of the living mute swan by one-third, [2] which would give a bill-to-tail length of about 190–210 cm (75–83 in) (based on 145–160 cm for C. olor [3]). By comparison to the bones ...
The whooper swan (/ˈhuːpə(ɹ) swɒn/ "hooper swan"; Cygnus cygnus), also known as the common swan, is a large northern hemisphere swan. It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American trumpeter swan , and the type species for the genus Cygnus .
The mute swan was first formally named by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789 and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin; cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning. [5 ...
The biggest species of swan ever was the extinct Cygnus falconeri, a flightless giant swan known from fossils found on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Sicily. Its disappearance is thought to have resulted from extreme climate fluctuations or the arrival of superior predators and competitors.
According to Pseudo-Eratosthenes and Hyginus' Poetical Astronomy, the constellation Cygnus was the stellar image of the swan Zeus had transformed into in order to seduce Leda [9] or Nemesis. [10] Pausanias and Servius state that Apollo turned Cycnus of Liguria into a swan after the death of his lover Phaeton, then later placed him among the ...
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The tundra swan (Cygnus columbianus) is a small swan of the Holarctic. The two taxa within it are usually regarded as conspecific , but are also sometimes [ 3 ] [ 4 ] split into two species : Bewick's swan ( Cygnus bewickii ) of the Palaearctic and the whistling swan ( C. columbianus ) proper of the Nearctic .
Afrocygnus is an extinct genus of swan, which lived during the Late Miocene, and perhaps up to the Late Pliocene, in what is today North Africa.The only genus of swan known in Africa, aside from fragmentary Pleistocene remains found in East Africa and from occasional observations of vagrant European swans along the Mediterranean coast, it lived in what was during the Miocene a damp wetland ...