New giant bird species identified 17 years after discovery

Résumé détaillé

Researchers have identified a new extinct species of ground-dwelling bird, Megapodius rokusi, from a fossil. This fossil, a leg bone, was discovered in Liang Bua cave on Flores…

For years, a fossil leg bone lay in Liang Bua cave on Indonesia’s Flores Island. The cave is famous for the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small human relative nicknamed the ‘hobbit’. Although researchers identified it as a bird bone, they set it aside, as studies at the time focused more on mammal remains.Now, almost 17 years later, researchers have taken a second look at the fossil. They have identified it as belonging to a new, extinct species of megapode. The ground-dwelling, chicken-like bird is the first megapode fossil ever found in Wallacea.

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