Dating to 25 million years ago, the ‘oldest and most-complete’ raptor skeleton ever found has been unearthed in Australia. The eagle-like remains are distinctive and indicate a hunter that was top of the food chain in the region.
With long-legs and a 15 cm (6-inch) foot-span, the apex sky-predator ambushed koala bears and flamingos. The almost complete fossil of the “Archaehierax sylvestris” was discovered on a remote cattle station near Lake Pinpa in South Australia, near to Coombalarnie Dam, Cooraninnie Dam and Lake Namba.
Palaeontologist Ellen Mather of Flinders University is the author of a new paper about the find that was recently published in the journal Historical Biology . The researcher explains that during the Oligocene, about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present, what is now the dry Lake Pinpa was a vast body of water surrounded by lush forests.
