🐦 BirdsPaleogeneLesser known
Gastornis
Gastornis parisiensis
Gastornis shows that large birds were important land animals alongside mammals during the Palaeogene.
Image: Vince Smith from London, United Kingdom · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Sites on today's globe · 1 marker
Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Gastornis parisiensis
- Period
- Early Eocene (Ypresian)
- Lived
- 56–45 Ma (56 million years ago)
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Forest, Plains
- Length (estimate)
- 2 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 150 kg
Description
Gastornis was a large, flightless bird with sturdy legs and an enormous, tall beak. It was long depicted as a predator, but its blunt beak and other features fit a mainly plant-based diet better. It lived in forests where early mammals were also diversifying. Direct evidence of its food is scarce, so an additional omnivorous diet cannot be ruled out.
Habitat
Dense, warm forests in the Northern Hemisphere.
Fossil sites
Meudon, Île-de-France
Cultural profile: France →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Gastornis