The area around the South Australian Lake Pinpa is now a bone -dry desert. But that was very different 25 million years ago: At that time there was a dense forest, where a large eagle was at the top of the food chain and chased in the thicket for bag animals. At least that reads Ellen Mather from Flinders University and her team from the fossil remains of Archaehierax Sylvestris, as the bird was called. The group presents the find in "Historical Biology".
Fossils of birds and especially eagles are rarely found, as the light and hollow bones are often destroyed during fossilization. Mather and Co were all the more pleased about their discovery. "Eagles are at the top of the food chain and are therefore rare – especially as fossils. We therefore very rarely find even a bone at all. The fact that we now have an almost complete skeleton is all the more remarkable, especially when you consider how old it is," says Trevor Worthy, a paleontologist involved in the study.
Archaehierax Sylvestris was therefore somewhat smaller than today's large, large wedge -tailed eagle (Aquila Audax) of Australia. But the entirety of the claws, de so -called catch - had a diameter of 15 centimeters, so that he could also kill larger prey and drag away. Conversely, his wing bones fell relatively small for a bird of its size: he therefore had rather short wings.
The scientists conclude that the eagle hunted in dense forest, where it had to move agilely in the vegetation. At the same time, it was a rather slow flyer and captured its food as a perch hunter who had to kill the victims from cover. Previously known predatory marsupials from this time and region had dog and cat size and may have had to be careful that Archaehierax sylvestris did not kill them. In addition, koalas, kangaroos and other herbivores as well as waterfowl were among its potential prey.
It is still unclear where in the eagle family the animal was classified: it has various features that distinguish it from today's hawk-like and eagles. Perhaps the species belonged to a separate branch of birds of prey, which subsequently died out.
