Wing width of 6m… The largest bird inhabited 50 million years ago.

A study showed that 50 million years ago, among birds with a wing width of 6 m, the largest bird in the Antarctic was inhabited.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley studied more than 10,000 pieces of material stored in the Paleontology Museum to discover and investigate fossils of toothed bird beaks. A prehistoric bird fossil called Pelagornithidae, its beak contains tooth-like projections called false teeth. This is believed to have helped prey on fish.

This fossil was excavated by the University of California Riverside Excavation Team on Seymour Island, east of the Antarctic Peninsula in the 1980s. Since the pelagarnis and the fossils themselves were found all over the world, these fossils were not particularly noticed at the time of their discovery, and were kept in the university museum without being revealed.

However, as a result of the research team’s restoration of the skull of an individual that left fossils, it turned out to be the largest physique of the known Pelagornis family. As a result of examining the size of the body and the size of the pelargos, calculated by the spacing between the false teeth, the fossil protagonist in question in the past study has a wing width of 5 to 6 m. It was concluded that there is a possibility of the largest pelagic algae ever discovered.

It is an existing bird flying in the sky. The maximum is Diomedea exulans. However, the Pelagornis department says that it is the limit size that can fly in the sky, boasting a physique that exceeds this.

The team found another fossil of a pelagarnis in the museum. This fossil was originally estimated to be between 43 million and 35 million years ago, but a re-examination of the strata from which the fossil was excavated revealed that the fossil was 50 million years old.

The research team believes that algae, which are believed to have lived a similar life to modern Shincheonongs, had sharp wings for a long time and predated fish and squid with their beaks lined with sharp false teeth when whales and others did not dominate the sea yet. It is estimated that large individuals, such as Pelagornis, were a terrifying predator that dominated the apex of the ecosystem, about twice the size of the traveler albatross. Related information can be found here .