Washington, Aug 10 (ANI): A new research has revealed that an enormous prehistoric bird, which might have resembled a very big ostrich, lived alongside dinosaurs around 83 million years ago.
The bird, called Samrukia nessovi after the mythical Kazakh Phoenix, lived in what is now Kazakhstan.
"The discovery confirms that big birds were living alongside Cretaceous non-avian dinosaurs," Discovery News quoted lead author Darren Naish, an honorary research associate in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, as saying.
"In fact, these big birds fit into the idea that the Cretaceous wasn't 'a non-avian dinosaurs-only theme park.' Sure, non-avian dinosaurs were important and big in ecological terms, but there was at least some space for other land animals," he stated.
Naish and his team made the discovery after analysing the fossil for Samrukia, which previously had been modified by someone to resemble an oviraptorosaur (a type of feathered dinosaur).
All that's left of this big bird is its toothless lower jaw. The structure and characteristics of the jaw are associated with birds and not non-avian dinosaurs, the researchers believe.
They conclude that the skull of the bird during its lifetime would have been about a foot long. If flightless, it could have stood close to 10 feet tall. If it flew, its wingspan is likely to have exceeded 13 feet.
The big bird is now the second known large avian from the dinosaur era.
The findings were described in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters. (ANI)
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