No, this isn't the title to new B-rated horror movie (though it could be). It is instead the pet name given to the Bullockornis, a 2.5 m tall duck. Although I suppose he'd be considered to be more of a giant cousin of the dodo (also extinct) in that it was a flightless bird (getting 500 kg into the air is no small feat, after all). It lived about 15 millions years ago in (where else?) Australia!
I wonder if they could replace our modern-day horses (I know people have tried riding ostriches)--they could've been like chocobos!
It's all fun to imagine such a large bird waddling except for the tiny, very minor detail that it was quite possibly carnivorous and its beak sharp and strong enough to shred through flesh. So perhaps it's for the best that most animals have shrunk over the eras (reasons for this include a change in oxygen levels and the climate, for example) or have been locked up inside Jurassic World :)
Sources:
Prehistoric wildlife
Te Ara
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Damn Deadly Dodo Double! Parrots (or rather birds that look like parrots, but I forgot their name) as small as 8 inches tall have been known to make rather unpleasant holes in people fingers, so this creature would tear out human liver in a single bite. Yum! (but where the chianti?)
ReplyDeleteI am interested in your comment about most animals shrinking over the eras. Probably it affects only the animals that exceeded their ecologically optimum size. For example, humans have grown quite significantly. (Incidentally, the Dutch are on average the tallest nation, so the Belgians cannot be much shorter, I think. You are the living proof and your Dad even more.)
Also, if I got a kick from Bullockornis, I would kick a bucket :) (Bozena says my puns and wordplays are the lowest of the low, and she's right)
Well, I guess it depends on which race of humans you're talking about. I know there were giants at one point, though they've been hunted down to extinction over the millennia. Alors, the cro-magnon man was taller, from what I read recently (180 cm). But the homo sapiens sapiens did start off generally much smaller. Don't know if there was any interbreeding with taller human varieties or not, but nutrition and hygiene (and growth hormones in our meat and milk products) certainly have helped the human population grow taller on average over the centuries.
DeleteYes, I have hear that the Dutch have the tallest avg. height in the world. But don't let it make you think it's the same in Belgium. Unless you go in Flanders towards the Dutch border, a lot of Belgians are shorter (and darker haired in general). Growing up, I was taller than most people (granted, I was with mostly French people, and girls tend to grow faster than guys). Also, my dad's American of Norwegian/Anglo-Saxon descent, so you definitely can't use him as an example. My mother's family (Belgian), are all much shorter than he is (her brother's barely taller than I am).
I enjoy your word plays. You should definitely kick that bucket--that was one of the highlights of my student career :)
As for animals shrinking over time, it's true. You can go check out the elephant section at the SD zoo (my favorite section). They've got life-sized statues of prehistoric animals with the modern equivalent. It's amazing to see how much taller they used to be! (Ex: this one giant eagle that could have eaten me for dessert, etc.)
DeleteThere are a lot of theories out there as to why that is, including that: land mass was bigger; dinosaurs weren't mammals and apparently most of the super giants, including that giant eagle and the Demon Duck laid eggs; the earth was actually bigger itself back in those days (but it's been shrinking some, or collapsing on its center, due to the gravitational pull from spinning on itself); the atmosphere was generally a lot more moist and therefore more propitious to life, or whatnot; different levels of oxygen; etc.
Again, these are all theories and who knows which one(s) is (are) right, but I find them really interesting!
Alas, my usual article trouble (an addition to my constant vowel problem) botched my pun. Instead of writing "Also, if I got a kick from Bullockornis, I would kick the bucket :)", I used "a" instead of "the", which made you think about the wall rather than the crypt.These naughty articles!
ReplyDelete[Now in the tone of a fussy physics instructor] What do you mean when you say that the Earth is shrinking due to the gravitational pull from spinning on itself? When anything spins, the mass tends to move in centrifugal direction rather than centripetal one. Think about a potter's wheel.
Ah, yes. A "the" instead of an "a" does make a world of difference!
DeletePhysics: Yes, everything flies out. Or sticks to the sides of the bucket (if it doesn't fly out). I was stating what has been advanced out there. Still, my ever-questioning mind has to ask: can the centripetal force ever be greater than the centrifugal one?
There is no such thing as "centrifugal force". There is only centripetal force which, in case of the Earth, is gravitation force, and in the case of a rock on a string rotated on a circular path in a horizontal plane, is the tension in the string that pulls the rock towards the center of rotation. What somehow "acts" like force is the inertia of the rock. It wants to move in tangential direction. That why it goes in centrifugal direction. So, due to rotation, the mass always tends to go in the direction out of the center. There are hundreds of explanations on the web, take a peek at this one: http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/physics/phys06/bcentrif/centrif.htm
DeleteI liked that website and its depiction of the ghost force which is really a lack of friction (in that example at least) to act as centripetal force. I think I've got my terms correctly now. I should have used the term "gravity" for the force that could potentially make the earth collapse in on itself, if it weren't for the earth's own solids and oceans pushing back. But, perhaps (and that's a big IF) the elements on earth at first weren't "compressed enough" to fully resist gravity and thus earth was allowed to become more compact until it could no longer push on its elements? I dunno. I'm trying to figure out how that particular theory may have sprouted... :)
DeleteBig scary birds one of them would make the cat hide
ReplyDeleteMost definitely! Unless it met a saber-toothed cat, which could measure about 41 inches (kinda like a lion), but could weigh 300 lbs and had canines that could be as long as 12 inches... Not too friendly either, right? :)
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