A new analysis of ancient eggshells—the leftovers of a prehistoric feast—suggests that humans helped drive Australia’s ‘thunder bird’ to extinction.
Fifty thousand years ago, Australia was populated by big birds—really big birds. One of them, known as mihirunga, or the “thunder bird,” was six times the size of a modern emu; it may have weighed in at 250 kilograms and stood more than 2 meters tall. But the giantdisappeared 45,000 years ago, and researchers have long puzzled over whether human hunters or climate change was the culprit.
The team tried extracting ancient DNA from the fossilized shells, but their efforts came up empty. “The shells were too old, and the climate is too hot,” says University of Turin proteomics expert Beatrice Demarchi, who worked with Miller to identify the eggshells. Instead, the team turned to eggshell proteins.
Eggshells form quickly—within 24 hours inside the bird’s oviduct—and promptly trap proteins inside the calcium and mineral crystals that form the shell. These proteins are “not affected by contamination from the environment—just by temperature and time,” Demarchi says. She was able to recover remnants of proteins related to egg formation.
When the team compared the protein sequences with those found in modern megapode eggs, they were completely different, even falling outside the group that connects all living land birds, Demarchi says. That left
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