New research reveals the origin of Australia’s extinct flightless giants, the mihirung birds

Source: theconversation.com --- Tuesday, October 10, 2017
A pair of _Dromornis planei_, an extinct mihirung bird from Australia, weighed a massive 300 kilograms. Brian Choo , Author provided Australia’s living flightless birds - the emu and close relative the cassowary - once roamed alongside much larger birds that resembled dinosaurs. These huge creatures are known as mihirungs, based on the Aboriginal term for “giant bird”. The mihirungs not only reached much larger sizes than emus, cassowaries, ostriches, kiwis and kin (known collectively as ratites ), but were much more intimidating in appearance. Unlike the small-headed ratites, they had massive skulls, with sail-like bills. Read more: Tall turkeys and nuggety chickens: large ‘megapode’ birds once lived across Australia Even the smallest of these mihirungs was as large as an emu, while others grew to the size of a horse, with males weighing up to 650kg . Despite their size, all were gentle giants, browsing on fruit and leaves of shrubs. In a study published today in Royal Society Open Science , we looked at the origin of these mihirungs, which had been a mystery. There have been repeated suggestions that they were related to waterfowl such as ducks and geese, but hard data was scarce. A skeleton of Dromornis planei , an extinct giant mihirung bird from Australia, on display in Darwin. The enormous head and bill are only slightly exaggerated by camera angle. Michael Lee, Flinders University and South Australian Museum Evolutionary ...

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