Fossil Reveals Ostrich Relatives Once Lived in North America
New research reveals that 50-million-year-old bird fossil specimens, some of which are on display in the Museum’s special exhibition Dinosaurs Among Us, are from a previously unknown relative of the modern-day ostrich.
The study, published recently in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, is co-authored by Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech and Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin, both of whom are also research associates at the Museum.
“This is one of the earliest well-represented bird species after the age of large dinosaurs,” said Nesbitt of the specimen, which was found more than a decade ago—with bones, feathers, and even soft tissues intact—in a former lakebed in Wyoming.