Some 50 million years ago , a flightless tropic shuttlecock , related to the Struthio camelus , roamed the wood of North America . Researchers discovered a stunningly well - maintain fogey of the ancient specie , known asCalciavisgrandei , about a tenner ago , but have only of late identified it as a relative of other flightless birds of the ratite family like ostrich , kiwis , and tinamous . Researchers conceive the discovery could be the key to identifying other ancient bird metal money .
TheCalciavisfossil was discovered in a former lake bed in Wyoming known for its well - preserved fish fogey . For researchers , the uncovering was momentous : Due to the frail nature of shuttlecock castanets , integral ancient bird fogy are incredibly rarified . But theCalciavisskeleton was n’t just intact — some of its feathers and soft tissue were also preserved .
Since its discovery , theCalciavishas remained something of a mystery for research worker . Though it was a spectacular ancient specimen , its taxonomy was unknown . But now , research worker Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech has published astudyin theBulletin of the American Museum of Natural Historyidentifying theCalciavisas an ancient relative of the ostrich .
Nesbit explained in apress statementthat tens of billion of years ago , when the fascinating flightless boo was survive , North America was a very unlike office . Nowadays , Wyoming is blanket in desert grit and sagebrush , but back when theCalciavisroamed the Earth , it was a tropic timberland . Nesbit explains that theCalciavislikely went extinct as North America ’s tropical forests begin to vanish . Today , you ’d have to travel to continent like Africa and Australia to find its relatives .
While the identification of theCalciavisfossil is exciting on its own , Nesbit also believes it could aid succeeding enquiry . “ The new birdie shows us that the bird group that includes the turgid flightless birds of today had a much extensive statistical distribution and longer evolutionary history in North America , ” he said . “ This dramatic specimen could be a ‘ anchor ’ that helps represent much of the sparse fogy [ disc ] of birds that once live in North America millions of years ago . ”
