Giant crane skull dicovered

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Researchers from Frankfurt and Tübingen say the skull of a very large crane found at the Hammerschmiede fossil site in Allgäu, Bavaria, is more than eleven million years old.

It is the earliest evidence of such a large crane in Europe, the palaeontologists say. The fossil most closely resembles the skull of today’s long-beaked Siberian crane, according to Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt.

Among the many fossil remains found at the Hammerschmiede site, a lot originate from birds and yield remarkable information. Only recently, the research team presented fossils of darter birds, which live only in the tropics. “The latest fossil find indicates that there must have been many more crane species in the past,” says Gerald Mayr, who headed the study. Today, Europe is home to just one species of crane – the Eurasian crane. “However, most of the evidence comes from the Mediterranean area, while evidence from central Europe is very scarce.” There are 15 species of cranes in the world today.

The new Hammerschmiede find is the skull of an unusually large species, as tall as the largest cranes alive today, the Sarus Crane in Asia and the Wattled Crane in Africa. “With a height of 1.75 meters, both species are as tall as an adult human and have wing spans of 2.6 to 2.8 meters,” says Mayr.

S: https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/08/a-giant-crane-from-southern-germany/134564

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

Giant flightless birds (including the largest one of all time, up to 3 metres tall) survived in Australia up till around 20000 years ago! Which means my ancestors would have coexisted with them for tens of thousands of years. Makes me wonder...