Giga-Goose: a New Fossil Discovery!

Genyornis newtoni paleo art by Jacob C. Blokland

Post Author - J. Carlin Decker III

A new discovery of a giant prehistoric bird in a southern Australian lakebed suggests a very distant, and extremely large relative to our modern day honking waterfowl. This fantastic new find of a skull and a few other bones from Genyornis newtoni, or Newton’s thunder bird, has given us new insight about this large, ancient species. 

A skull of G. newtoni was first discovered in 1913, and its name comes from English ornithologist Alfred Newton. Unfortunately, that specimen was deteriorated from salt buildup as well as damaged by overpopulated rabbits burrowing for nourishment. In 2014 vertebrae paleontologist at Flinders University, Jacob Blokland, went out to that initial excavation site, and in 2019, found quite a bit more about this elusive bird.

The remains of the Giga-Goose skull

The original excavators were able to determine that G. newtoni was about 230 kilograms, 2 meters tall (twice the size of an ostrich), and about 50,000 years old, surviving into the Pleistocene Epoch. Based on this initial find, researchers concluded that this bird was more related to another group of giant, flightless birds, gastornithids, that primarily roamed about North America, Europe, and Asia. However, the bombshell find of Blokland’s newfound specimens suggests that G. newtoni is likely the cousin of a completely different group of birds.

Blokland hypothesizes that G. newtoni is more closely related to screamers, a South American waterfowl, but also there are similar skull structures to that of the magpie goose. The more complete skull on the 2019 specimen shows an extra, gooselike bump on the top of its bill, and the way it is shaped suggests it was fit for aquatic life. The shape of the bones in its skull would have helped prevent the flow of water into the ears, making it significantly easier to hunt via the dipping of the head. 

Researchers believe that the extinction of G. newtoni was caused by the migration of humans onto the Australian continent, about 65,000 years ago. Environmental factors, such as drier and saltier lakes in southern Australia also contributed to the bird’s demise. This new discovery helped clear up the phylogenetic confusion from 1913, but it is also just intriguing to find out more about these ancient geese.