Giant goose. (Earth/Archaeology).Think your holiday turkey left a huge carcass? When paleontologists pieced together these 8-million-year-old fossil bones found in Alcoota, Australia, they rebuilt what was possibly the biggest bird that ever lived. The jumbo flightless flightless see ratite. goose, Dromornis stirtoni Dromornis stirtoni, or Stirton's Thunder Bird, a member of the family of Dromornithidae, is the largest flightless bird found through fossil evidence. It was three metres (10 feet) tall and weighed half a tonne. , stood 3 meters (9 feet) tall and weighed 500 kilograms (half a ton). Peter Murray, a Museum of Central Australia researcher, says he can't tell if the goose was a plant-eating herbivore herbivore: see carnivore. herbivore Animal adapted to subsist solely on plant tissues. Herbivores range from insects (e.g., aphids) to large mammals (e.g., elephants), but the term is most often applied to ungulates. or flesh-eating carnivore carnivore (kär`nəvôr'), term commonly applied to any animal whose diet consists wholly or largely of animal matter. In animal systematics it refers to members of the mammalian order Carnivora (see Chordata). . It had a powerful jaw but lacked the sharp beak or claws to tackle prey. But with a toe bone 10 times the size of your finger, the goose probably fought off predators with ease. "It would kick them into orbit," Murray says. |
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