Gastornis
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 Gastornis fossil skeleton
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Gastornis was an extinct genus of large flightless birds that lived during the late Paleocene and Eocene periods of the Cenozoic. Gastornis lived in Europe, but it had an extremely close relative in North America; the North American bird is often called Diatryma (DIE-a-TREE-ma) (from Greek, "diatrêma" "Canoe"), but experts now believe they both belong in the Gastornis genus. Gastornis's name means 'Gaston's bird'; it is named after Gaston Planté, who discovered the first fossils at Geiseltal, Germany in 1855. In 1876, Edward Drinker Cope discovered another set of fossils from the same species in America, and named them Diatryma.
[edit] Description
Gastornis measured on average 1.75 metres tall, while "Diatryma" was 2 metres tall. It had a remarkably huge beak with a hook, which strongly suggests that it was carnivorous. Gastornis had large powerful legs, with large, taloned feet, which help support the theory that it was indeed a predator. At the time, the environment in which Gastornis lived in had large portions of forest. Classically, Gastornis has been depicted as predatory. However, with the size of Gastornis's legs, the bird would have had to have been extremely agile to catch fast moving prey. This suggests that Gastornis may have been a predominantly a scavenger like Tyrannosaurus, or a omnivore or even a herbivore. Indeed, Gastornis's large beak would have been suited for crushing seeds and vegetation. Alternatively, the beak may simply have been used for sexual display. With these contradicting finds and hypotheses make the dietary paleobiology of Gastornis impossible to pinpoint. It has also been suspected that Gastornis was a pack hunter and used ambush techniques to capture prey; if Gastornis wasn't a herbivore or scavanger, it would have most certainly needed some other means of hunting prey through the dense jungle. The agility required would be extreme, so some scientists have speculated that Gastornis may have ambushed prey, or even hunted together in packs in order to pursue or ambush prey.
Similar (but unrelated) gigantic birds were the South American Phorusrhacoids and the Australian Dromornithidae (Genyornis). The former were certainly carnivorous, and the latter are suspected of being also, too. The closest living relatives of Gastornis are the Anseriformes, which include waterfowl and screamers. It is possible too that gastornithids might well be anseriformes themselves.
Gastornis was among the largest, if not the largest predators alive during the late Paleocene and early Eocene. It had no natural enemies, nor serious competitors aside from other Gastornis, or rare, large predatory mammals, such as the bear-like Arctocyon (literally "bear-dog") of Europe. These ferocious birds were apex predators that dominated the forest ecosystems of North America and Europe until the Middle Eocene. The Middle Eocene saw the rise of large creodont and mesonychid predators to ecological prominence in Eurasia, and North America. The appearance of these new predators marked the decline of Gastornis and its relatives, possibly due to the mammalian predators' tendency to hunt together in packs (prevalent especially in hyaenodont creodonts).
[edit] References
- Hébert, E. (1855). Note sur le tibia du Gastornis parisiensis. C.R. Acad. Sc. Paris 40: 579-582. [Article in French]
[edit] External links
