﻿ ‘Squawkzilla’: Cannibal parrot half the size of a man is found


Pablo Tucker
August 10, 2019

The measurements make it double the size of a Kakapo, previously the world's largest known parrot, which also hails from New Zealand and is still extant today (although now classified as Critically Endangered).

Although the area is now very cold and known for its skiing, Scofield said the climate at the time meant the parrot would have lived near a giant lake in a diverse subtropical forest.

The weight of a parrot reached seven pounds.


Researchers say Heracles stood up to a meter (3.3 feet) tall.

Scientists have found a variety of extinct giant bird species across the globe, but until now, researchers had yet to uncover a giant parrot species.

The fossils had been dug up in 2008 in St Bathans, New Zealand, the place many 1000's of hen bones have been discovered.

It's twice the size of the critically endangered Kākāpō - the former world's largest parrot.

After that, a workforce of researchers started reanalyzing the findings earlier this yr, in keeping with the BBC.


Numerous birds that Heracles lived alongside survived for millions years, disappearing only after the arrival of humans, but the giant parrot didn't last as long. However which may not have been sufficient to satiate the enormous parrot.

"New Zealand is well known for its giant birds", Trevor Worthy, a Flinders University professor and lead author of the paper, said in a statement. Likely that he ate not only fruits, but could hunt and other parrots.

Archer told AFP that the bird had "a massive parrot beak that could crack wide open anything it fancied".

One of the reasons she gave is that bird bones are much less dense than mammal bones, making them more fragile and more likely to break down rather than fossilize. Worthy doesn't think the bird was necessarily aggressive, however, given that it had no predators.

"We have been excavating these fossil deposits for 20 years, and each year reveals new birds and other animals.no doubt there are many more unexpected species yet to be discovered in this most interesting deposit", he added.

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