Artist’s reconstruction of the ancient Annakacygna swan Gunma Museum of Natural History
A newly described bird from prehistoric Japan was an odd duck, so to speak. The enormous swan lived in the sea, sporting stubby wings that it possibly used to create a cradle on its back for offspring.
Hiroshige Matsuoka at Kyoto University and Yoshikazu Hasegawa at the Gunma Museum of Natural History in Japan analysed a fossilised skeleton that was excavated in 2000 in the Usui river in central Japan. The riverbed’s marine deposits date back to the Miocene epoch more than 11 million years ago.
Comparing…
