Re: Dromornis stritoni

[skeptix@cyberwarped.com (John Holmes)]

I didn't see any news report of this, but it sounds legitimate to me.

Australia did indeed have an extinct megafauna. Dromornis was a large
Emu-like flightless bird. The present-day emu (Dromaius
novaehollandiae) is up to 2m tall, although its precise relationship
to
the extinct Dromornothids is uncertain.

Dromornithids (aka Mihirungs) consist of 5 known genera and 8 species,
represented by bones, eggshells, gizzard stones, footprints and
trackways. They became extinct about 26,000 years ago.

Ref: Rich, P.V. (1979), 'The Dromornithidae, an extinct family of
large
ground birds endemic to Australia' Bulletin of the Bureau of Mineral
Resources Australia 184, p1-196.

Pat Rich has published extensively on the extinct megafauna, which
also
included Diprotodon, a wombat-like animal about the size of a
hippopotamus, and 3m+ tall kangaroos. There is much debate about
whether their demise was caused by climate change or by the arrival of
humans and associated increase in fire frequency about 100,000 years
ago.

I imagine the 'as big as an elephant' remark refers more to height
than
body weight.

Cheers,

John.