The giant bird in Australia is extinct due to excessive hunting

About 50,000 years ago, a large bird in Australia was extinct, because humans considered their eggs a very good and nutritious food source.

According to a study recently published in Nature Communications, people have "wiped out" the giant bird with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni. This bird cannot fly due to underdevelopment. They are shaped like ostriches but are actually close relatives of ducks, geese and swans.

Image of restoring birds Genyornis newtoni.(Source: Nature Communications).

Researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder (USA) discovered this after studying the eggshell fragments found in 10 regions in Australia. They found that the shell fragments had been burned.

The burnt black shells were found near some other broken fragments that were not burned at all, meaning that the eggs were not burnt in a forest fire, because wildfires would burn all over. set of eggshell debris.

Therefore, the researchers said: "These characteristics are best suited to the ability of humans to collect eggs from a bird's nest, burn a fire and bake eggs to eat".

The researchers said that each egg of this bird weighs 4kg, very tasty, nutritious equivalent to more than twenty chicken eggs, and provides about 2,000 calories of energy.

Previous research on this bird said that the Australian climate at that time became too dry, causing adverse conditions for them. However, researchers argue that human hunting itself is " most likely a decisive factor" in the extinction of Genyornis newtoni.