Dromornis australis

Dromornis australis is an extinct species of giant flightless birds found in Pliocene deposits of Australia. They are considered candidates for the largest birds to have ever existed, but only fragmentary remains are known.

Dromornis australis
Temporal range: Pliocene
Photolithograph of holotype specimen
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: †Gastornithiformes
Family: †Dromornithidae
Genus: †Dromornis
Species:
†D. australis
Binomial name
†Dromornis australis
Owen, 1872

The species, first described by Richard Owen in 1872, is the type of the genus Dromornis and family Dromornithidae. Owen's new taxon was published in a series on prehistoric birds, read before the Zoological Society of London and published in its Transactions.[1][2] The fossil remains were discovered at Peak Downs in Queensland.[3]

Owen had previously sought evidence of Dinornis in the palaeontological collections of early Australian excavations. A femur that he had noted in the appendix of Thomas Mitchell's explorations, found in a cave, did not allow him to confirm an alliance with any previously described species of large flightless birds. The new material had been found while digging a well at Peak Downs and forwarded to Owen via W. B. Clarke, a geologist employed by the state of New South Wales, with a remark by Gerard Krefft that placed it with the New Zealand moas of Dinornis. Richard Owen found affinities and distinctions in an osteological comparison to species of the extinct Dinornis and the extant Dromaius (the emu) and proposed that it represented a new genus.[2]

References
  1. Owen, R. (1872). "June 4, 1872". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 1872: 682–683. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.1872.tb00495.x.
  2. Owen, R. (1874). "On Dinornis (Part XIX.): Containing a Description of a Femur indicative of a new Genus of large Wingless Bird (Dromornis australis, Owen) from a post-tertiary deposit in Queensland, Australia". Transactions of the Zoological Society of London. Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press. 8: 391–383, Pl. LXII, LXIII.
  3. Rich, Pat Vickers (1980). "The Australian Dromornithidae: a group of extinct large ratites". Contributions in Science. 330: 93––103.


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