Paleontologists have desribed a brand new species of huge passerine fowl based mostly the fossilized stays from the Bannockburn Formation close to St Bathans in Otago, New Zealand.
Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen), grownup and juvenile, at Taveuni, Fiji. Picture credit score: Charles J. Sharp, https://www.sharpphotography.co.uk / CC BY-SA 4.0.
The newly-described fowl lived in New Zealand through the Early Miocene epoch, some 19 million years in the past.
Named the St Bathans currawong (Miostrepera canora), the species would have been about the identical measurement because the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) present in New Zealand at present however was most likely all black.
“We persecute the magpie as an Australian that has no place within the New Zealand ecosystem however its shut relations lived right here previously,” mentioned Dr. Paul Scofield, senior curator at Canterbury Museum.
“We’ve most likely been with no member of the magpie’s prolonged household for less than 5 million years.”
“New Zealand’s ecosystem has modified dramatically over thousands and thousands of years and harbored various species throughout totally different eras,” added Dr. Trevor Worthy, a researcher at Flinders College.
“There’s an concept that we should always goal to return New Zealand to a pre-European ecological state.”
“However at that time limit, New Zealand’s ecosystems had been altering repeatedly for thousands and thousands of years.”
“Aotearoa had misplaced a lot of the floral range previously current by the point people arrived.”
“There have been few fruiting tree species left and the lack of currawongs and different pigeons displays this.”
“Different teams of crops and animals arrived from 2.6 million to 11,700 years in the past.”
“Many extra have arrived since people occupied the land.”
“The pre-European ecological state of New Zealand will not be essentially any higher or worse than every other time previously.”
“As a substitute, the fossil file suggests there was no utopian state and that we should always have fun the variety we at the moment have.”
The fossilized bones of Miostrepera canora have been discovered at St Bathans fossil web site, which was as soon as on the backside of a giant prehistoric lake.
“The work has revealed that New Zealand’s fowl inhabitants within the Miocene period had surprisingly sturdy similarities to that of Australia at present,” Dr. Scofield mentioned.
“In the course of the Miocene, 20 to five million years in the past, New Zealand was a lot totally different.”
“Strolling by means of a New Zealand forest from that period, you’ll have seen quite a few eucalypts, laurels and Casuarina, very similar to you’ll in an Australian forest at present.”
“The foremost factor that formed the New Zealand we see at present was the extinction of many crops and animals that thrived in heat climates after a interval of speedy cooling that started about 13 million years in the past.”
“The distinctive name of the currawong wouldn’t have been the one birdsong you’ll hear in historic New Zealand.”
The invention of Miostrepera canora is reported in a paper within the the journal PalZ.
_____
T.H. Worthy et al. A big cracticine passerine (Aves, Artamidae, Cracticinae) from the Early Miocene, St Bathans Fauna of New Zealand. PalZ, printed June 25, 2025; doi: 10.1007/s12542-025-00736-x
