As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday 22 May 2016

Fossil pelagornithid bird with 6m wingspan found in Antarctica

The fossil remains of a 50-million-year-old bird with a six-metre wingspan have been found in Antarctica. Paleontologists at a natural history museum in Argentina said they had identified the pelagornithid, or bony-toothed bird, nearly three years after its fossilised bones were first found at an Argentine research base on the Antarctic island of Marambio.

"Almost three years ago, remains began to appear of what we believed could be this bird.

Then we found a bone that confirmed that it was a pelagornithid," an extinct family of enormous seabirds, said Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche, a researcher on the project.

The bird's wings, fully extended, spanned more than 6.4 metres.

This is twice as big as the albatross, the largest flying bird alive today, which has a wingspan of 3.3 metres.

Ms Acosta Hospitaleche's colleague Marcos Cenizo, the director of the Natural Sciences Museum of La Pampa, said the bird was the largest pelagornithid specimen ever found.


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