{"id":5745,"date":"2014-07-07T17:19:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T00:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=5745"},"modified":"2014-07-07T17:19:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T00:19:58","slug":"argentavis-magnificens-unseated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/07\/argentavis-magnificens-unseated\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentavis magnificens Unseated"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The Washington Post<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

A newly declared species may be the largest flying bird to ever live<\/h1>\n

\"\"An artist\u2019s drawing of the newly named species Pelagornis sandersi shows the discovered bone fragments in white. The strikingly well-preserved specimen consisted of multiple wing and leg bones and a complete skull. (Liz Bradford)<\/em><\/p>\n

By Rachel Feltman<\/strong><\/p>\n

When South Carolina construction workers came across the giant, winged fossil at the Charleston airport in 1983, they had to use a backhoe to pull the bird, which lived about 25\u00a0million years ago, up from the earth.<\/p>\n

But if the bird was actually a brand-new species, researchers faced a big question: Could such a large bird, with a wingspan of 20 to 24 feet, actually get off the ground? After all, the larger the bird, the less likely its wings are able to lift it unaided.<\/p>\n

The answer came from Dan Ksepka, paleontologist and science curator at the\u00a0Bruce Museum<\/a>\u00a0in Greenwich, Conn. He modeled a probable method of flight for the long-extinct bird, named\u00a0as a new species<\/a>\u00a0this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If Ksepka\u2019s simulations are correct,\u00a0Pelagornis sandersi<\/i>\u00a0could be\u00a0the largest airborne bird ever discovered.<\/a><\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at WaPo<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Washington Post A newly declared species may be the largest flying bird to ever live An artist\u2019s drawing of the newly named species Pelagornis sandersi shows the discovered bone fragments in white. The strikingly well-preserved specimen consisted of multiple wing and leg bones and a complete skull. (Liz Bradford) By Rachel Feltman When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}