#sylviornis

[ppaleoartistgallery]

Paleostream 25/11/2023

Results of today's #Paleostream!!!

Today we sketched Sylviornis (New Caledonian Du), Pisanosaurus, Italolestes stroppai, and Lisowicia

last spream on traditional (maybe) since i can finally pick up my new laptop on Monday (last week was also traditional but i still dont know why tumblr didnt let me upload the images)

[katborg82]

Today's bird is Sylviornis!

[veloci-raptor]

Flocking Together #28

Sylviornis/Pisanosaurus

Italolestes/Lisowicia

[alphynix]

Island Weirdness #38 — Sylviornis neocaledoniae

Between Australia and Fiji lie the islands of New Caledonia, an archipelago at the northern end of the mostly-submerged continent of Zealandia. Having split away from Australia at the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, New Caledonia's Cenozoic isolation has resulted in the islands acting as a refugium for a number of "living fossil" lineages, including the kagu, a small nautilius, and the "primitive" flowering plant Amborella.

One of the strangest residents of these islands was Sylviornis neocaledoniae, a huge flightless bird standing around 0.75m tall (2'6") and measuring about 1.7m long (5'7"). Initially mistaken for a ratite, it was later found to be a cousin of the galliforms, the group that contains modern chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, megapodes, and curassows.

Sylviornis had a massive skull with a large deep beak, topped with a bony crest, along with reduced wings and stout legs. It also had no wishbone, extra tail vertebrae, and a ribcage and pelvis that looked more like a non-avian dinosaur.

It was probably a slow-moving herbivore, browsing on plant matter and digging up roots and tubers with its beak and feet.

Thousands of subfossil remains of Sylviornis individuals have been found, but a large proportion of them are all juveniles, suggesting that this species' reproductive strategy was to have large numbers of young at a time. It also seems to have had a surprisingly short lifespan for its size — just 5-7 years.

New Caledonia was first settled by humans around 1500 BCE, and it's likely that Sylviornis was hunted by both them and the invasive mammals they brought along like dogs, pigs, and rats.

The folklore of the Kanak people features stories of a large flightless bird known as the du, described as being reddish-colored with a star-shaped bony crest, so it's possible Sylviornis actually persisted alongside the new arrivals for some time — but eventually the environmental disruption was too much for these odd dino-chickens, and they were gone.

[markaleb]

FINALLY got these all done! Last week of the prompt was bird week, and then the final day was draw your favorite dinosaur. Parasaurolophus has long been my favorite. :) And I know chickens weren’t listed on @a-dinosaur-a-day‘s lists specifically, but they’re very dinosaurish I think. 

Meant to do all of these different, but I didn’t realize till I came to post that I’d accidentally done rainbow ace twice. Oh well. 

Day 23 - Trigender Aptornis 

Day 24 -  Pan Sylviornis

Day 25 -  Rainbow Ace Lithornis

Day 26 -  Bi Aro Gigantornis

Day 27 -  Androgynous Argentavis

Day 28 -  Rainbow Aro Anthropornis

Day 29 - Rainbow Ace Chicken

Day 30 - Trans Ace Parasaurolophus

[252mya]

Sylviornis neocaledoniae

Artwork by Franz Anthony / @franzanth

The so-called New Caledonian giant fowl stood as tall as an adult human. This distant relative of chickens and pheasants only went extinct as recently as 3,000 years ago.

We’re proud to have supported the Danish Magazine Illustreret Videnskab with this image for their article about giant animals!

—

252MYA creates custom-made artwork for private collections and editorial, scientific, or educational project.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Sylviornis neocaledoniae

By Scott Reid on @drawingwithdinosaurs

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Name: Sylviornis neocaledoniae 

Status: Extinct 

First Described: 1980

Described By: Poplin 

Classification: Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Galloanserae, Pangalliformes, Sylviornithidae  

Sylviornis is a fairly well known and well studied genus of stem-chicken, due to its fairly large size - a trait more commonly seen in stem-ducks than in stem-chickens. Sylviornis lived on the islands of New Caledonia and Île des Pins, from about 12,000 years ago until sometime around 1500 BC, when it went extinct due to human activity - so the entirety of its temporal range is within the Holocene of the Quaternary. These very large, bulky birds were originally thought to be ratites - given, you know, the fact that they were flightless large birds - but later studies of its subfossil remains have indicated its true chicken affinities. It was weird in other ways as well - its shoulder bones weren’t fused to a wishbone, it had an abnormally high number of tail vertebrae, and its hips and ribs were basically like those of non-avian dinosaurs. Its wings were, like in many flightless birds, reduced to small stubs. They probably laid clutches of up to 10 eggs, and lived for a very short time compared to its size, only about 7 years. Though originally thought to be mound-builders, given their lack of close relationship to megapodes, they probably did not utilize this highly unusual method of reproduction. They were probably slow moving, browsing herbivores, digging up roots and tubers for food with their well-adapted, strongly built feet. Island life was a primary driver behind their large size, a phenomenon known as island gigantism. 

Buy the author a coffee: http://ko-fi.com/kulindadromeus

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylviornis 

http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/the-giant-chickens-of-new-caledonia/ 

[cryptid-quest]

Cryptid of the Day: Sylviornis

Description: Most know the fates of the Elephant Bird and the Moa, yet there’s another ratite that suffered a similar fate. Sylviornis were large birds that inhabited the island of New Caledonia. When humans arrived on the island in 1500 BC, feral dogs and pig killed off the remaining population. The species went extinct around 300 AD, however, some still claim to see them, even as late as the 1990′s.