Two possible reconstructions of Samrukia nessovi, with a human and 'normal-sized' Mesozoic bird for scale.
Credit: John Conway
Partial lower jaws of the giant Cretaceous bird Samrukia. (a) posterior region of left half of lower jaw as seen from above. (b) posterior region of left half of lower jaw as seen from below. (c) right side of lower jaw, seen from the outside. (d) right side of lower jaw, seen from the inside.
Credit: Naish, Dyke, Cau, Escuillié and Godefroit
Samrukia nessovi jaw to scale with an ostrich lower jaw, showing just how massive this species was.
Credit: Naish, Dyke, Cau, Escuillié and Godefroit
SYDNEY: The fossilised remains of a new species of giant bird have been discovered, indicating that life in the Cretaceous period was far more diverse than ever imagined.
Uncovered in Kazakhstan, the remains of the 85-million-year-old species, named Samrukia nessovi, are limited to the two halves of the animal's lower jaw. The jaw specimen is well preserved and at just over 30 cm long, represents an animal that could have stood 3 m tall and weighed up to 50 kg - if it was flightless. Samrukia represents one of the biggest known bird species from this period.
"The fact that giant birds were living in Late Cretaceous Central Asia is itself a neat discovery: it provides more information on the composition of Central Asian Cretaceous communities," said Darren Naish from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, co-author of the paper published in the current issue of Biology Letters.
The Kazakh phoenix
Prior to this discovery, of the 100 species of Mesozoic birds known, only one was large-bodied. Found in France and named in 1998, Gargantuavis philoinos was the sole giant terrestrial bird known, with the vast majority weighing less than 2 kg, and comparable in size to modern finches, thrushes and crows.
The specimen was found in the Kyzylorda District of Kazakhstan during the 1980s and ended up in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. In 2010, palaeontologist and dinosaur expert at the institute, Pascal Godefroit, identified it as being unusual, and called together a team to examine it.
"Loads of neat specimens get discovered this way (that is, in museum collections)... there is tonnes of material in museums worldwide that hasn't been studied or analysed properly, and not that many palaeontologists going 'round studying it all," said Naish.
The generic name of the species is a nod to Samruk, a mythological Kazakh phoenix, while its specific name, nessovi, honours the late Lev Nessov, a Russian palaeontologist who, before his death in 1995, made a valuable contribution to Central Asian vertebrate palaeontology.
But could this giant fly?
Due to the fact that they only have a lower jaw fragment to work with, the researchers are reluctant to speculate on the behaviour of Samrukia, and cannot confirm whether or not it could fly.
"We only have the lower jaw, and it just isn't possible to say from this whether Samrukia could fly or not. The majority of birds of this time were capable of flight, but flightlessness was present in several bird lineages of this time. It's therefore totally plausible that Samrukia was flightless," said Naish. "The idea that it might have been flightless comes entirely from its large size - as we know from the modern world, the really big birds (like ostriches, emus and dodos) are often flightless."
According to Naish, if Samrukia could fly, it could have been a large, condor-shaped bird with a giant wingspan of up to four metres and could have weighed at least 12 kg. But flightessness would have afforded it more room to grow, so a flightless Samrukia could have weighed up to 50 kg.
Picture looks wrong...
It says in the article the bird was 3 metres high but the drawing looks to be about 2.1 to 2.2 metres high (Assuming a 2 metre human; if a 1.8 metre then it's even smaller!
Time fir a little photoshopping i think...