[Merged] Asian 'phoenix' lived with the dinosaurs

[Von Bismarck]

The creature may have been taller than an ostrich if it had been flightless and, if it flew, had a greater wingspan than that of the albatross, they reported in the British journal Biology Letters.

The scientists have named the bird Samrukia nessovi, after a mythological Kazakh phoenix known as the samruk, and after Lev Nessov, a celebrated Russian palaeontologist who died in 1995.

The estimate is based on a pair of mandibular rami, or the upright part of an L-shaped lower jawbone, that were found in Late Cretaceous sediment in Kyzylorda, southern Kazakhstan.

The bones measure 275 millimetres (10.8 inches), indicating a skull that would have been a whopping 30 centimetres (a foot) long.

Whether the bird flew and what it ate are unclear because the evidence is so sketchy.

Asian 'phoenix' lived with the dinosaurs

[Persia]

An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan is further evidence that giant birds roamed - or flew above - the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14466814

[xXHellkittiesXx]

So if birds evolved from dinosaurs, what did this thing evolve from?

[Blue Lizard]

Asian 'phoenix' lived with the dinosaurs

I was actually excited as I thought they found a phoenix (considering it is on UM)... but nope, it is a bird. The title is messed up...

Also the bird looks like an ostrich... perhaps it didn't fly?

[Blue Lizard]

So if birds evolved from dinosaurs, what did this thing evolve from?

Are you high or just a tad obsessed?

[Abramelin]

They lived like 65 million years ago.

Well, maybe the next were related:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/08/21/a_new_look_at_old_terror_birds/

There was was in France around the same time:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v377/n6545/abs/377110a0.html

[Taun]

Perhaps a predecessor of the Moa?

They grew to about 12 ft. in height and weighed in at around 500 lbs... though they were

flightless....

EDIT:

Or a Haast's Eagle...

Edited August 11, 2011 by Taun

[DigitalDreamer]

Well then it seems we have more brids that could carry off a human

[Abramelin]

So if birds evolved from dinosaurs, what did this thing evolve from?

The theory is that birds and dinos evolved from some common ancestor.

[Abramelin]

Old news, but still:

A new giant ground bird from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France

Abstract

New discoveries afford a much better knowledge of the large birds previously reported from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France on the basis of a single synsacrum fragment. An incomplete pelvis consisting of the synsacrum with part of the ilia is used to define a new taxon of bird, Gargantuavis philoinos, to which a femur is also referred. This bird is characterized by its very large size (comparable to that of an ostrich), a broad pelvis with an anteriorly placed acetabulum, and a short robust femur. The occurrence of this very large, flightless, bird in the Late Cretaceous shows that, contrary to widespread opinion, the evolution of large terrestrial birds was not simply the result of adaptation during the Cenozoic to ecological niches left empty by the extinction of the dinosaurs. It also strongly suggests that some of the large fossil eggs from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France were laid by large ground birds rather than dinosaurs.

http://www.mendeley.com/research/new-giant-ground-bird-upper-cretaceous-southern-france/

[xXHellkittiesXx]

The theory is that birds and dinos evolved from some common ancestor.

Thank you for considering my question, unlike Blue Lizard