Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
BBC News: Ancient American bird was glider – BBC News article; How the dinosaur bird took to the skies – Daily Telegraph article; Secret of flight for world's largest bird revealed – COSMOS magazine article; Argentavis, the largest flying bird, was a master glider – Article from the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science
Teratornithidae is an extinct family of very large birds of prey that lived in North and South America from the Late Oligocene to Late Pleistocene. They include some of the largest known flying birds. Its members are known as teratorns.
The largest known marsupial, and the largest metatherian, is the extinct Diprotodon, about 3 m (9.8 ft) long, standing 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall and weighing up to 2,786 kg (6,142 lb). [48] Fellow vombatiform Palorchestes azael was similar in length being around 2.5 m (8.2 ft), with body mass estimates indicating it could exceed 1,000 kg (2,200 lb).
The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds (Vorombe/Aepyornis) of Madagascar, which were related to the ostrich. They exceeded 3 m (9.8 ft) in height and 500 kg (1,100 lb) in weight. [44] The last of the elephant birds became extinct approximately 1000 years ago.
During the early Cenozoic, after the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, mammals underwent an evolutionary diversification, and some bird groups around the world developed a tendency towards gigantism; this included the Gastornithidae, the Dromornithidae, the Palaeognathae, and the Phorusrhacidae. [36]
Analyzing a leg bone from a fossil site in Colombia, scientists have identified a massive “terror bird” that lived about 12 million years ago.
They are thought to have gone extinct around AD 1000, likely as a result of human activity. Elephant birds comprised three species, one in the genus Mullerornis, and two in Aepyornis. Aepyornis maximus is possibly the largest bird to have ever lived, with their eggs being the largest known for any amniote.
With an estimated length of 33.9 cm (13.3 in) based on the assumption that the fossil was that of a spider, and with a leg-span estimated to be 50 centimetres (20 in), Megarachne servinei would have been the largest spider to have ever existed; exceeding the goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), which has a maximum leg-span of around 30 cm (12 ...