A bird that swooped over the waters covering what is now southeast England had wings that spanned five metres (16.25 feet) tip to tip and had bony teeth with which to grab its food, a study published on Friday said.
The extraordinary beast has been identified thanks to a well-preserved skull unearthed on the Isle of Sheppey, east of London. Named Dasornis emuinus, it has been dated to 50 million years ago.
Gerald Mayr of Germany's Senckenberg Research Institute said Dasornis was "like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane."
"By today's standards, these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak," he said.
Like all birds, Dasornis did not have real teeth, which are made of enamel and dentine.
Instead, it had bony "pseudo-teeth," a feature unique to a group of now-extinct giant birds called Pelagornithids.
The spikes were handy for Dasornis, enabling it to snap up fish and squid while it swooped over the sea, suggests Mayr.
"With only an ordinary beak, these would have been difficult to keep hold of, and the pseudo-teeth evolved to prevent meals slipping away."
The find is reported in a British journal, Palaeontology, published by the Palaeontological Association.
The extraordinary beast has been identified thanks to a well-preserved skull unearthed on the Isle of Sheppey, east of London. Named Dasornis emuinus, it has been dated to 50 million years ago.
Gerald Mayr of Germany's Senckenberg Research Institute said Dasornis was "like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane."
"By today's standards, these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak," he said.
Like all birds, Dasornis did not have real teeth, which are made of enamel and dentine.
Instead, it had bony "pseudo-teeth," a feature unique to a group of now-extinct giant birds called Pelagornithids.
The spikes were handy for Dasornis, enabling it to snap up fish and squid while it swooped over the sea, suggests Mayr.
"With only an ordinary beak, these would have been difficult to keep hold of, and the pseudo-teeth evolved to prevent meals slipping away."
The find is reported in a British journal, Palaeontology, published by the Palaeontological Association.
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