Huge flightless swan roamed the ancient seas with a cradle on its back

Big flightless swan roamed the traditional seas with a cradle on its again

A fossilised leg bone present in Japan belonged to a prehistoric swan species with diversifications just like a number of different water birds, together with a duck-like invoice and the ft of a loon

Artist’s reconstruction of the traditional Annakacygna swan

Gunma Museum of Pure Historical past

A newly described chicken from prehistoric Japan was an odd duck, so to talk. The large swan lived within the sea, sporting stubby wings that it probably used to create a cradle on its again for offspring.

Hiroshige Matsuoka at Kyoto College and Yoshikazu Hasegawa on the Gunma Museum of Pure Historical past in Japan analysed a fossilised skeleton that was excavated in 2000 within the Usui river in central Japan. The riverbed’s marine deposits date again to the Miocene epoch greater than 11 …