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Fossil Discovery May Reveal Largest Bird Ever To Fly

Line drawing of World’s Largest-Ever Flying Bird, Pelagornis sandersi, showing comparative wingspan. Shown left, a California Condor, shown right, a Royal Albatross.  (Liz Bradford/WNPR)
Line drawing of World’s Largest-Ever Flying Bird, Pelagornis sandersi, showing comparative wingspan. Shown left, a California Condor, shown right, a Royal Albatross. (Liz Bradford/WNPR)

An extinct species of bird just discovered by a Connecticut scientist may have been the largest ever to fly. The pelagornis sandersi lived 25 million years ago. The fossil was uncovered at an airport in the 1980s but went largely unnoticed until 2010.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Patrick Skahill of WNPR has the story on the bird with a 24-foot wingspan, and what the finding means for paleontologists.

  • Read more on the story at WNPR
  • Reporter

  • Patrick Skahill, reporter for WNPR in Connecticut. He tweets @ptskahill.
  • Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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