Extinct Giant Bird Eggshell 

Age: 66 / 56 Million Yeard Old

Paleocene Epoch

Genus: Gastornis

Specimen: Eggshell

Discovered: Salernes, France

 

-We have multiple displays with each having a unique egg shell fragment. You may not recieve the exact one pictured, but one similar!

 

This genus of giant flightless birds arose in the immediate aftermath of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Reaching a height of over two meters (6ft, 7 in), this now extinct predator dominated the world free od dinosaurs leaving few fossils and this egg shell as the only evidence of its existance. 

 

~ Gastonis ~

Gastornis is a wiped out family of enormous flightless birds that lived during the mid Paleocene to mid Eocene ages of the Paleogene time frame. Fossils have been tracked down in Europe, Asia and North America.

 

Gastornis species were extremely enormous birds, and have generally been viewed as hunters of little well evolved creatures. Nonetheless, a few lines of proof, remembering the absence of snared hooks for known Gastornis impressions and investigations of their bill structure and isotopic marks of their bones have made researchers reevaluate these birds as herbivores that presumably benefited from extreme plant material and seeds. Gastornis is for the most part consented to be connected with Galloanserae, the gathering containing waterfowl and gamebirds.

 

Gastornis is known from a lot of fossil remaining parts, however the most clear image of the bird comes from a couple of almost complete examples of the species G. gigantea. These were for the most part exceptionally enormous birds, with immense noses and huge skulls hastily like the rapacious South American "fear birds" (phorusrhacids). The biggest known species, G. gigantea could develop to the size of the biggest moas, and arrived at around 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in greatest level.

The skull of G. gigantea was tremendous contrasted with the body and capably assembled. The nose was very tall and compacted (leveled from one side to another). In contrast to different types of Gastornis, G. gigantea needed trademark depressions and pits on the fundamental bone. The 'lip' of the nose was straight, without a raptorial snare as found in the ruthless phorusrhacids. The nostrils were little and situated near the front of the eyes about halfway up the skull. The vertebrae were short and enormous, even in the neck. The neck was moderately short, comprising of no less than 13 monstrous vertebrae. The middle was moderately short. The wings were minimal, with the upper wing-bones little and profoundly decreased, comparative in relation to the wings of the cassowary.

 

In Late Paleocene stores of Spain and early Eocene stores of France, shell pieces of gigantic eggs have turned up, in particular in Provence.These were portrayed as the ootaxon Ornitholithus and are apparently from Gastornis. While no immediate affiliation exists among Ornitholithus and Gastornis fossils, no different birds of adequate size are known from that overall setting; while the enormous Diogenornis and Eremopezus are known from the Eocene, the previous lived in South America (actually isolated from North America by the Tethys Ocean then) and the last option is just known from the Late Eocene of North Africa, which likewise was isolated by an (though less wide) stretch of the Tethys Ocean from Europe.

 

A portion of these sections were sufficiently finished to remake a size of 24 by 10 cm (around 9.5 by 4 inches) with shells 2.3-2.5 mm (0.09-0.1 in) thick, generally half again as extensive as an ostrich egg and altogether different in shape from the more adjusted ratite eggs. On the off chance that Remiornis is to be sure accurately distinguished as a ratite (which is very dubious, nonetheless), Gastornis stays as the main realized creature that might have laid these eggs. Somewhere around one types of Remiornis is known to have been more modest than Gastornis, and was at first portrayed as Gastornis minor by Mlíkovský in 2002. This would pleasantly match the remaining parts of eggs without a doubt more modest than those of the living ostrich, which have likewise been found in Paleogene stores of Provence, were it not for the way that these eggshell fossils additionally date from the Eocene, however no Remiornis bones are yet known from that time.