Origin of 50,000-year-old giant eggs in Australia

Centuries ago, Earth was once inhabited by giant creatures, including the Demon Ducks of Doom. They are classified as flightless birds, 2 meters tall and 200kg in weight.

Demon Ducks of Doom

Recently, a report in the journal PNAS said that despite being extinct, the effects of this species remain to this day. Going back 40 years, scientists have unearthed the remains of a few giant prehistoric eggs hidden in the sand dunes of southern Australia. Since then, a heated debate has raged around the issue of where these eggs actually came from.

These 50,000-year-old eggs, 20 times heavier than the average chicken egg, belong to the last breed of ducks of the megafauna species (also known as dromornithids), named Genyornis newtoni, according to the latest research results. Accordingly, Genyornis is a herbivorous, flightless and has the same mass and size as a Demon duck.

So far - although some researchers around the world still insist that these giant eggs must be Genyornis's, others believe they come from a large, chicken-like bird called Progura, belongs to the megapode genus and weighs only 5 to 7 kg. Compared to Genyornis, the Progura looked like a small child.

'However, our analysis of the protein sequence from the egg shows that the eggshell cannot come from megapodes and Progura birds,' said Josefin Stiller, a researcher and an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen.

In other words, DNA analysis is an important step in answering the question of which bird these 50,000-year-old eggs belong to. By grinding eggshells into a powder, the researchers found the proteins in them, then took the resulting pieces, assembled them in the correct sequence, and analyzed them using AI to find the codes. inherited genes. Finally, they compared it with the genetics of more than 350 living bird species.

'We used our data from the project containing the genomes of all major bird lines, to reconstruct the genera to which the extinct bird might belong,' said Stiller.

Species Genyornis newtoni

From there, the team found that the eggs could not have been laid by a megapode, and the 50,000-year-old doppelganger Progura theory of egg-producing chickens was unlikely.

'We are delighted to have successfully carried out an interdisciplinary study in which we used protein sequence analysis to shed light on animal evolution,' Collins said.

Plus, the connection between these eggshells and the great Genyornis may even help scientists understand human evolution. Especially because other studies have shown that prehistoric humans would cook and eat the giant eggs of Genyornis, the new details provide 'information about the ways in which humans interacted with the environment. multidimensional way'.

That could include the timing of species extinctions, and perhaps even a role for humans in that extinction, because humans hunted bird eggs for food.

However, according to the study authors, 'controversy over the taxonomic identity of the eggs mined by the first prehistoric Australians around 50,000 years ago have been resolved'.