Antarctica yields fossils of giant birds with 21-foot wingspans
Context: Scientists have identified the fossil of a giant bird that lived about 50 million years ago, with wingspans of up to 21 feet that would dwarf today’s largest bird, the wandering albatross.
Pelagornithids
- The fossils recovered from Antarctica in the 1980s represent the oldest giant members of an extinct group of birds that patrolled the southern oceans.
- Birds filled a niche much like that of today’s albatrosses and travelled widely over Earth’s oceans for at least 60 million years.
- The pelagornithids came along to claim the wingspan record in the Cenozoic, after the mass extinction, and lived until about 2.5 million years ago.