Scientists identify giant bird species that lived with hobbit humans in Indonesia

Paleontologists identified a new species of giant bird, Megapodius rokusi, from a fossil bone found in a cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia.

The bone was originally excavated in 2009 at the Liang Bua cave, located nearly 7 meters below the cave floor. The Liang Bua site is famous for the remains of Homo floresiensis, an ancient human species nicknamed "hobbits" because of their small stature of approximately 1.07 meters.

The newly identified bird lived on the island alongside these small humans, as well as dwarf elephants and giant megapodes. Megapodes are ground-dwelling birds that bury their eggs in mounds of soil or underground burrows to use the earth's heat for incubation. Indonesian zooarchaeologist Rokus Due Abe first recognized the bone as belonging to a bird, but its significance remained unclear for 17 years.

Haneke Meijer from the University Museum of Bergen in Norway and her colleagues later conducted a detailed examination of the fossil. They discovered that the joints of the lower foot bone had unique shapes, including a specific groove and a rounded cavity that differed from other large-footed animals. The researchers determined the fossil dates back to between 190,000 and 120,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch.

By measuring the bone and using statistical estimates to correlate bone dimensions with body weight, the team estimated that the bird weighed about 3.9 kilograms. Scientists hope that finding more fossils of this species will help them understand the evolution, behavior, and eventual extinction of these birds.