Palaeontologists working near Alice Springs uncover for the first time a set of articulated bones and partial skeleton of Ilbandornis woodburnei, a massive bird that once roamed an evolving continent 8 million years ago.
Alcoota is a doorway to a time millions of years ago when massive land mammals roamed Central Australia. Its fossil beds hold many mysteries, but this year palaeontologists struck gold.
That's not to mention the giant wombat-like creatures with trunk-like noses that avoided crocodile predators that lived in local water courses. The artists warm themselves up in the crisp winter sunshine, a break from the suffocating heat of the wall unit inside the centre.possibly the most famous giant flightless bird from the region.If you're lucky you'll meet artist Bronwyn Payne Ngale. It was her grandfather Etarilkaka, an Aboriginal stockhand, who stumbled across an unusual bone on Alcoota cattle station in the 1950s."We paint those paintings of the megafauna because it's right in our backyard.
Adam Yates, senior curator of earth sciences with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, says once Stirton saw the bones, he raced up to Alice Springs with a small team. "We've got a moderately diverse fauna of reptiles, birds and mammals that include many very large species." "That will allow us to sort out our entire collection and thereby make more accurate reconstructions of the entire animal," Adam says.Adam says this latest find can help piece together what the environment was like for these animals during a crucial period in the evolution of Australia."In order to understand the flora and fauna that we have in modern-day Australia, we need to understand its history.
"Back then it was wet enough and had enough permanent water in it to have waterbirds, turtles, crocodiles, flamingos, ducks, all sorts of things," Adam says.
Fossils Alcoota Alice Springs Adam Yates Big Bird Flightless Bird Ilbandornis Woodburnei Megafauna Bird Prehistoric Animals
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