Giant Flightless Bird Once Roamed The Arctic

Plants and Animals





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Despite its fearsome appearance, the bird was probably a herbivore. Marlin Peterson/University of Colorado Boulder

Around 53 million years ago the Arctic Circle's freezing, windswept Ellesmere Island would have been unrecognizable. Damp, humid and lush, the place would have been covered by thick cypress swamps not unlike what still survives in southern Louisiana. Swinging through the trees would have been primates, while alligators patrolled the waterways and tapirs grazed on the land. In among all this, new research shows that a giant, flightless bird stalked the wetlands searching for food.