College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, GPO 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia, Australia.
PANGEA Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2019 Aug 30;15(8):20190467. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0467. Epub 2019 Aug 7.
Insular avifaunas have repeatedly spawned evolutionary novelties in the form of unusually large, often flightless species. We report fossils from the Early Miocene St Bathans Fauna of New Zealand that attests to the former existence of a giant psittaciform, which is described as a new genus and species. The fossils are two incomplete tibiotarsi from a bird with an estimated mass of 7 kg, double that of the heaviest known parrot, the kakapo Strigops habroptila. These psittaciform fossils show that parrots join the growing group of avian taxa prone to giantism in insular species, currently restricted to palaeognaths, anatids, sylviornithids, columbids, aptornithids, ciconiids, tytonids, falconids and accipitrids.
岛屿鸟类群系以体型异常庞大、通常不能飞行的物种的形式反复产生进化创新。我们报告了来自新西兰早期中新世圣巴塞洛缪动物群的化石，证明了一种巨型鹦鹉形目动物的存在，该动物被描述为一个新的属和种。这些化石是一只估计体重为 7 公斤的鸟类的两条不完全的胫骨，是最重的已知鹦鹉鸮鹦鹉 Strigops habroptila 的两倍。这些鹦鹉形目化石表明，鹦鹉与越来越多的倾向于岛屿物种巨型化的鸟类分类群一起，目前仅限于古颚总目、雁形目、Silviornithidae、鸽形目、Aptornithidae、鹳形目、佛法僧目、隼形目和鹰形目。
