However, an international research team was recently able to identify the bird by analyzing parts of its eggshell. Researchers PNAS The study that led to the identification was reported in the journal.
Almost man. Arrived in the southern continent 65,000 years ago, the first inhabitants of Australia ate eggs 55-50,000 years ago, and they found pieces of the shell at many sites, some showing traces of heat treatment (soot, burning), but it is not known which bird eggs these were. Some of the eggshells can be identified as emu eggs, which were eaten 55,000 years ago and, until recently, were regularly present in the sediments. Until now we did not know what other unrecognizable egg is?
The Juniors (a goose-shaped bird 2 meters long) and Progora (medium-sized turkey) are the candidates, and it was not possible to determine from the eggshell fragments which animal it was by morphological or geochemical methods.
The research team has now been able to extract proteins from the eggshell, from the closed corners between their mineral components, which, by determining their sequence, can identify the owner of the egg: the original inhabitants. Juniors Newtonian They were fed eggs.
The Juniors It was an ancient, helpless species of bird that probably roamed the Australian continent with a strong force on its strong legs, and could grow to more than two meters, weighing 220-240 pounds, and its eggs were the size of a watermelon and about. They were 1.5 lbs. It was a member of the Australian megafauna, one of the animals that became extinct a few thousand years after the arrival of man. Although the bird itself may not have been caught, at least no signs of it were found at the sites, but eggs were preferably eaten. It is easy to imagine that the serious decline of eggs led to the extinction of the species.
