Ruffled feathers over fossil bird find. Image source, PA Media. Palaeontologists found fossils of the parrot in southern New Zealand. Bird family tree shaken by fossil discovery Baby bird fossil is 'rarest of the rare' How birds got their beaks.
The parrot, dubbed Heracles, is estimated to have been more than half the size of a human. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Related Topics. Fossils Parrots Birds. Its giant beak may have enabled Squawkzilla to eat whatever it pleased, meat or plant — perhaps even other parrots. Researchers discovered two leg bones from the bird in near St. Bathans on New Zealand's South Island. The bones, however, were initially misidentified as belonging to an extinct giant eagle.
But, Ellen Mather, a graduate student at Flinders University, decided to re-evaluate the specimen more than a decade after it was unearthed. In a new study published in the journal Biology Letters, a team of researchers reported that the bones, which are thought to be between 16 and 19 million years old, came from to the largest parrot ever found in the fossil record. They named the bird Heracles inexpectacus, after the Greek demigod and the unexpected nature of the discovery.
Michael Archer, a co-author of the new study, told NPR t hat the giant parrot was tall enough to be "able to pick the lint out of your bellybutton. Squawkzilla was more than twice as heavy as the current king of parrots: the New Zealand kakapo, which is thought to be the largest parrot in the world.
But despite its size, Squawkzilla couldn't fly. Rather, it scuttled about the forest floor. The mega-parrot joins a legacy of giant birds in Oceania's fossil record. Because New Zealand is cut off from other land masses, few predators could reach the islands. That left the evolutionary door open for creatures like Squawkzilla to thrive and grow there. Before Homo sapiens arrived on the islands, New Zealand was home to the flightless moa, a bird that reached heights of 7 feet, and its primary predator, the pound Haast's eagle, which boasted a foot wingspan.
Parrots are found in warm climates all over most of the world. Many parrots are kept as pets, especially macaws, Amazon parrots, cockatiels, parakeets, and cockatoos. These birds have been popular companions throughout history because they are intelligent, charismatic, colorful, and musical.
Some birds can imitate many nonavian sounds, including human speech. The male African gray parrot Psittacus erithacus is the most accomplished user of human speech in the animal world; this rain forest-dweller is an uncanny mimic.
Some parrot species are highly endangered. In other cases, once tame birds have reproduced in the wild and established thriving feral populations in foreign ecosystems. The monk green parakeet, for example, now lives in several U. All rights reserved. An eastern rosella Platycercus eximius photographed in Loganholme, Australia. Common Name: Parrots. Scientific Name: Psittaciformes. Type: Birds. Diet: Omnivore. Size: 3. Weight: 2.
Size relative to a teacup:.
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