Impressive discovery in Australia: They have found fossils of a huge extinct eagle that may have hunted kangaroos

A group of scientists starred in a amazing and valuable find in South Australia. They are the fossil remains of a huge extinct eagle who inhabited the oceanic country a few years ago 60,000 years and that, thanks to its powerful 30cm clawswas able to hunt animals the size of kangaroos.

The call gaff eagle (Dynatoaetus gaffae), whose wingspan reached three meters, “was easily ‘capable of hunting’ a juvenile giant kangaroo, a large flightless bird or other species of the lost megafauna of that time,” said the paleontologist. Trevor Worthyprehistoric bird expert and leader of the Flinders University scientific expedition.

The specialists of that university center, who have linked the Gaff’s eagle with the Old World vultures and the Philippine eagle, which feeds on monkeys and is in danger of extinction, believe that it is the largest bird of prey in the mainland Australia. and potentially the largest continental eagle in the world.

This extinct specimen was “nearly as large as the world’s largest eagles once found on the islands of New Zealand and Cuba, including the huge extinct 13-kilogram New Zealand Haast’s eagle.”

The remains of the prehistoric eagle, named after Australian paleontologist Priscilla Gaff, who first described these fossils in her dissertation in 2022, have been compared to other historic fossils found elsewhere in Australia more than half a century ago.

“We were very excited to find a lot more bones from much of the skeleton to create a better picture and description of these magnificent giant birds long extinct“, said Ellen Mather, the lead author of the study published yesterday in the Journal of Ornithology after participating in the expedition.

Brittle 193-million-year-old star fossil discovered in Neuquén: Why it’s a revealing find

A team of scientists from the Conicet of Neuquén has discovered the “Virtually complete” fossil of a brittle star that lived in South American seas about 193 million years ago and assured that this discovery has since generated new unknowns in this field This species was believed to inhabit only EuropeThe agency reported this Thursday.

It is the first articulated fossil of a South American ophiuroid, a class of echinoderms, a group that includes starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers.

The specimen found in March 2020 in the Neuquén town of Arroyo Lapa in the Sierra Chacaicó Formation is the oldest record of a brittle star for the Mesozoic Era (between 66 and 251 million years old) in South America. only one from the subcontinent reported so far for the Jurassic period (between 152 and 201 million years).

Previously known fossil records of conjoined brittle stars belonged to the Paleozoic era and the Cenozoic era, representing geological time periods before and after the Mesozoic, respectively.

“This discovery allows us to expand brittle star research for the region, as we find the first specimen of the genus Sinosura outside Europe,” explained Evangelina Palópolo, Conicet postdoctoral fellow at the IIPG.

The discovered fossil dates back to the Pliensbachian floor of the Lower Jurassic, which is approximately 184-193 million years old.

IT​