Australia’s first vulture species has been identified after the reclassification of a century-old fossil specimen.
The extinct vulture lived during the middle and late Pleistocene period – commonly known as the ice age – between 50,000 and 770,000 years ago, researchers estimate.
The bird was previously classified as an eagle but new analysis has shown it was an old world vulture, a group with 16 living species. The raptor has been renamed Cryptogyps lacertosus, meaning powerful hidden vulture, and classified in a new genus.
It was similar in size to a wedge-tailed eagle, but anatomical differences suggest it was a scavenger rather than a hunter.
“The key thing that separates this fossil from our eagles is that the structure of tarsus – its lower leg bone – is much less … developed in ways that would support musculature,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Ellen Mather, a palaeontologist at Flinders University. “Clearly, this was from a species that wasn’t using its feet for killing like an eagle would.”
The bird lived at the same time as Australia was inhabited by megafauna including marsupial lions (Thylacoleo) and 2-metre tall giant wombats (Diprotodon).
“It would have played a very important role as a scavenger, consuming carcasses that were left behind by particularly the megafaunal marsupials – quickly breaking them down and preventing the spread of disease,” Mather said.
“In the modern day a lot of scavenging is done either by smaller marsupials or mammals. You see wedge-tailed eagles taking up that role as well, but they don’t necessarily do the role as efficiently as vultures do because they’re not specialised for it.”
A fragment of a Cryptogyps lacertosus wing bone was first found on the Warburton River in South Australia in 1901. The team analysed the original specimen as well as newer fossils from the Wellington caves in New South Wales and Leaena’s Breath cave in Western Australia, comparing the bones to living vulture and eagle species around the world.
The researchers believe the vulture’s demise may have been linked to a mass extinction event in Australia about 50,000 years ago, during which up to 79 species of large mammals died off. These extinctions “would have severely reduced the resources needed to support a scavenging species”, they said.
“Australia’s pretty much the only continent where we can confirm that vultures went completely extinct,” Mather said. “Asia, Africa, Europe and both North and South Americas have their own vultures. Their fossil record varies in the diversity but a lot of the surviving species today are also currently endangered.”
Nine vulture species are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered.
The Australian bird was formerly named the powerful grave eagle, “Taphaetus” lacertosus (scientific names found to be invalid are indicated by quotation marks).
The research was published in the journal Zootaxa.
