Mother Of A Goose! Giant Ocean-going Geese With Bony-teeth Once Roamed Across SE England

September 29, 2008

A 50 million year old skull reveals that huge birds with a 5 metre wingspan once skimmed across the waters that covered what is now London, Essex and Kent. These giant ocean-going relatives of ducks and geese also had a rather bizarre attribute for a bird: their beaks were lined with bony-teeth.

It may be a few weeks until the British pantomine season kicks-off, but this new fossil from the Isle of Sheppey is giving ‘Mother Goose’ an entirely new meaning. Described today (September 26) in the journal Palaeontology, the skull belongs to Dasornis, a bony-toothed bird, or pelagornithid, and was discovered in the London Clay, which lies under much of London, Essex and northern Kent in SE England.

The occurrence of bony-toothed birds in these deposits has been known for a long time, but the new fossil is one the best skulls ever found, and preserves previously unknown details of the anatomy of these strange

The ‘goose’ Dasornis emuinus, skimmed over the waters, covering the area what is now London, Kent and Essex in the UK. (Credit: Image courtesy of Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum)

More of the story,
click image

Posted in History, Science and Technology