By Mark Brown, Wired UK
Paleontologists at Yale University have discovered that a prehistoric bird with club-like bludgeons for hands likely used its powerful wings to beat up monkeys, snakes and other predators.
The fowl, named Xenicibis xympithecus, lived in Jamaica about 10,000 years ago, and was first discovered in the 1970s. The flightless bird was about the size of a chicken, with a long beak and legs. So far, so ibis.
But instead of small hands, this ancient bird sported thick, curved hand bones, like two baseball bats, hinged at the wrist joint.
The team at Yale analyzed new wing bones from the Xenicibis, and found evidence of combat in fractured hand bones and broken arm bones, giving evidence that his bird could deal extreme force when clobbering each other with their specialized wings.
And, outside of Xenicibis-on-Xenicibis battles, it would have proved especially useful for a small, flightless creature in a land teeming with deadly predators. The bird might have used its flail-like bones to club animals such as the Jamaican yellow boa, a small extinct monkey and over a dozen birds of prey.
“No animal has ever evolved anything quite like this,” said Nicholas Longrich of Yale University’s Department of Geology and Geophysics, who led the research. “We don’t know of any other species that uses its body like a flail. It’s the most specialized weaponry of any bird I’ve ever seen.”
Nowadays, modern ibises don’t have these remarkable weaponized arms, but still use their wings to pound away at foes, after grabbing an opponent with their sizable beak. No other bird features such highly powerful weaponry, though some birds do still pack a small arsenal: the spur-winged goose, for example, has a bony knob on its arm to deal extra damage in disputes.
Images: Courtesy of Nicholas Longrich. 1) Illustration of two Xenicibis xympithecus birds fighting. 2) A skeletal reconstruction of Xenicibis xympithecus. 3) An extinct ibis’ wing bone structure (top) compared to a modern American white ibis’.
Source: Wired.co.uk
