Giant, flightless birds wandered Canadian Arctic 50 million years ago

More than 50 million years ago, Canada's Arctic was a warm, wet place, home to alligators, giant tortoisesand as it now turns out giant, flightless birds.

A new study by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the University of Colorado Boulder has confirmed that a single fossilized toe bone discovered in the early 1970s onEllesmere Island in what is now Nunavutbelonged to a species calledGastornis.

The bird, which scientists believe was as tall as a person, boasted a head the size of a horse's and weighed several hundred pounds, roamed during thesteamy Eocene epoch, about 50 million to 53million years ago, feasting onfoliage, nuts, seeds and hard fruit.

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"Certainly that toe is enough to say, 'Yep this was a great big bird,'" co-author Jaelyn Eberle, an associate professor in geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, told CBC News.

The toe a rare find, as bird bones don't tend to hold up as well as those of mammals and reptiles was found in the '70s by an Arctic paleontology team consisting ofMary Dawson, Robert (Mac)West, Howard Hutchinson and Malcolm McKenna.

"It was discovered, it was listed in fossil lists, butwas never described and was actually kind of lost in the collection,"Eberle said.

Lost, that is, until Eberleandco-authorThomas Stidham of the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to study it. They compared the toe with Gastornisfossils from Wyomingdating back to the same period. Gastornis fossils have also been found in Asia and Europe.

"I couldn't tell the Wyoming specimens from the Ellesmere specimen, even though it was found roughly 4,000 kilometresto the north,"Stidham said in a press release.

Using the same technique, the scientists were also able to identify another fossil from the sameexpedition asPresbyornis, something like a long-legged duck or swan.

"It's a very diverse Arctic fauna,"Eberlesaid. "It'sexciting.Ithinkthere's probablymore discoveries waiting tohappen, both out in the field, but also in the lab and inthe collections."

Studying the past to predictthe future

These discoverieshelp shed light on what the Arctic was like during theEocene epoch, whenEllesmere Island was most likelya hot, swampy environment, home to giant turtles, alligators, primates and hippo-like beasts.

That, in turn,gives us some idea of what to expect as climate change dramatically alters the northern landscape, Eberle said.In order to develop accurateclimate models to predict the future, scientists need solid, measurabledata from the past especially from previous periods of warmth in the Arctic.

"Idon't think it's goingbe a surprise to anyone that the permanent ice is going away and there's a real chance it will be gone in my lifetime," she said.

That doesn't mean Nunavut will onceagain become overrun with alligators, giant tortoises and massive vegan birds, Eberele said,but wildlife and treelines are moving farther north,and long-abandoned migratory routes between North America and Asia could open up again.

"I'm not predicting alligators in the near future, but I do think there are going to be changes," she said.