[HN Gopher] Face of ancient Australian 'giga-goose' revealed aft...
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Face of ancient Australian 'giga-goose' revealed after fossil skull
found
Author : gmays
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-06-15 01:20 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nhm.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nhm.ac.uk)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Searching "giga-goose" before June 3rd brings up basically
| nothing, someone last year called this species a "gigantic goose"
| and a bunch of unrelated things. I wonder where the nickname came
| from, and how important it was towards getting this article
| published.
|
| Also I wonder if there's a move away from "mega" towards "giga"
| as mega anything seems kinda small. I can't see "tera" ever being
| a thing, I can't think of an independent connection to some other
| word meaning large.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's really weird that giga was used, since mega has a specific
| meaning in this context:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna
| martyvis wrote:
| Alliteration always anticipates attention.
| greggsy wrote:
| They don't get as much love as the more famous Genyornis, also
| known as the "Demon Duck of Doom" [1].
|
| [1] https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-
| time/extinct-...
| jpm_sd wrote:
| This would make a great title for the next Untitled Goose
| Game
| werrett wrote:
| Doubly so given that Untitled Goose Game is from an
| Australian game studio.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_House
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Etymologically, "giga" does make more sense as a generic 'big'
| prefix than "mega". I believe that the former basically means
| "great" while the latter means "mighty", which is less
| flexible.
|
| "Tera" has the problem of being overloaded. It's a homophone
| with "terra" which is a common prefix for things related to the
| Earth or ground. Also that lack of a strong second consonant
| hurts it. Etymologically it means "monstrous", which is even
| less flexible.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I'm generally curious about what these ancient megafauna tasted
| like. Especially this one now, seeing as humans apparently ate
| them to extinction. Someone start cloning monster geese!
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Someone start cloning monster geese!
|
| Does Canada's work not count in this regard?
| card_zero wrote:
| I vaguely remember somebody tasting thawed-out mammoth once.
| This would be a better story if it had a conclusion.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| https://www.adn.com/alaska-life/2023/05/07/mystery-meat-
| of-1...
|
| Tells of two such people, and a myth of more. It tastes like
| you'd expect random meat sitting in a freezer for millennia
| to taste like.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I'd imagine the sooner something went extinct the tastier it
| was.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Local legend in Central America has it that manatees contain
| every kind of meat - chicken, beef, poultry, even bacon. As
| you can imagine, before modern protections, manatees tended
| to disappear not long after humans moved into a region.
| yzydserd wrote:
| Hopefully the Giga Goose tastes better than the Lidl Goose.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Shortly after humans arrived, however, Genyornis went extinct.
| The birds are thought to have been eaten into extinction, with
| climate change hastening their demise.
|
| It's funny how they (and all the other large mammals) survived
| for 1.8M years of massive global climate change but the period
| just after we arrived (like in the Americas) was what "hastened
| their demise" rather than the humans with clubs they hadn't had
| time to evolve to be scared of, eating every last one of them.
| justinclift wrote:
| I guess they tasted really, really good? :)
| elmomle wrote:
| > The paper suggests that these adaptations might be a sign
| that the bird was already struggling before the arrival of
| humans. Changing climate patterns meant that wet areas like
| Lake Callabonna started getting drier around 60,000 years ago
| and dried up completely 12,000 years later.
|
| > There are indications that the legs of Genyornis were
| gradually adapting to this drier climate, but the species would
| have remained under considerable pressure. This environmental
| stress is thought to be why the birds had higher than expected
| levels of bone disease at around the same time.
|
| In this case it sounds like climate change was in fact a
| stressor, though I believe you're right--even without climate
| change this bird would have gone the way of the moa. Perhaps a
| better phrasing would have been "Already under stress from
| climate change, they are thought to have been eaten to
| extinction."
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Disagree with this assessment. There was not large numbers of
| humans until the end of the glacial period and the advent of
| pastoralism and agriculture.
| Jedd wrote:
| > pastoralism and agriculture?
|
| Which landmass / culture / epoch are you trying to describe
| here?
| llm_trw wrote:
| For one species, sure, for 35 you have to wonder how
| ideologically driven you have to be to keep blaming the
| environment. We're at tobacco companies in the 90s level of
| denialism here.
| strken wrote:
| This is an uncharitable interpretation of the facts.
|
| The thing about climate change in prehistory is that it
| drives changes to human life. Archaeologists put glacial
| maxima on their timelines because it's such an important
| factor when trying to understanding human migration, the
| spread of new technologies that do better in drier or
| wetter climates, the shift to different food sources, and
| so on. This predates the current climate-aware political
| landscape.
|
| If 90% of a species is killed off by climate change, and if
| for hundreds of thousands of years that species survived
| glacial maxima in reservoir populations in areas that are
| now populated by starving humans who kill the remaining
| 10%, was it the climate or the humans who wiped out the
| species? The changing climate killed more, but the humans
| were the differentiating factor, so which one do you point
| the finger at?
|
| I don't think it's right to call that denialism.
| N0b8ez wrote:
| > The changing climate killed more, but the humans were
| the differentiating factor, so which one do you point the
| finger at?
|
| If we're the differentiating factor, I'd have to blame
| us. Am I right in understanding that these species were
| normally being thinned during each glacial maxima, such
| that it was already a set part of their evolutionary
| environment? If that's right, then aren't we the ones to
| blame?
|
| Otherwise, is a murderer merely a "contributing cause" to
| someone's death if the victim happens to be sick at the
| time of the killing?
| strken wrote:
| I think there's a good argument that either or both
| factors contributed. We tend to blame people because they
| have agency and the natural world does not, and that's
| not a bad way to understand things.
|
| My main point was that I don't think it would be
| denialism for someone to say "no, the species was pushed
| to the brink by climate change anyway, we know other
| species went extinct prior to human colonisation, and
| even though humans arguably made it worse there's no
| conclusive evidence". Glacial maxima are hundreds of
| thousands of years apart and given the timescales
| involved it's hard to say whether a species is adapted to
| them or whether it just got lucky.
| N0b8ez wrote:
| Weren't there something like 5 glacial maxima in the past
| 200 thousand years? I had the impression they were more
| regularly occurring than "hundreds of thouands of years
| apart".
| strken wrote:
| Yeah my bad, I meant that glacial and interglacial
| periods happen in a cycle that can take up to 100k years
| before it repeats, but phrased it in a way that's
| outright wrong as well as misleading. I think the overall
| point still stands though.
| defrost wrote:
| There's a lot of divided opinion there in the informed
| community, not many think that humans soley wiped out the
| megafauna, a good number question whether they played a
| _significant_ decisive role in their demise, most think humans
| killed and ate a few.
|
| What is certain is the same change in global conditions that
| allowed humans to walk to Australia and later filled the moat
| coincided with the fall off in megafauna. There's correlation,
| but causation??
|
| The divided opinions:
|
| _Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna
| extinctions in Australia_ (2016)
| https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10511
|
| _Humans killed most of Australia's megafauna: study_ (2017)
| https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2017/01/humans-...
|
| _Did people or climate kill off the megafauna? Actually, it
| was both_ (2019) https://theconversation.com/did-people-or-
| climate-kill-off-t...
|
| _Humans coexisted with three-tonne marsupials and lizards as
| long as cars_ (2020) https://theconversation.com/humans-
| coexisted-with-three-tonn... It turns out
| humans coexisted with the megafauna over about 80% of south-
| eastern Sahul for up to 15,000 years, depending on the region
| in question. In other regions such as Tasmania,
| there was no such coexistence. This rules out humans as a
| likely driver of megafauna extinction in those areas.
| sethammons wrote:
| You seem certain on something that is not certain. People
| likely traveled over water. Ancient people were very
| impressive.
|
| From https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/learning-
| modules/ancien....
|
| > The first people probably came to Australia from around the
| area that is now Timor. To get to Australia, they must have
| made a canoe voyage of about 90 to 150 kilometres of open
| water, which would have been a remarkable maritime
| achievement
| defrost wrote:
| "Walk" as in short voyages during the time of the Sahul: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul#/media/File:Map_of_Sunda.
| ..
|
| The timing aligns with the genetics and with artefacts:
| https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-
| moments/resources/evidence-o...
| derefr wrote:
| The climate change gave them fewer places to hide from the
| humans with clubs.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > humans with clubs they hadn't had time to evolve to be scared
| of
|
| This is not a thing. Species don't require generations to learn
| to be afraid of other species that hunt them. Species have
| encountered new species since the beginning of time. If it took
| 1000 generations to learn such a thing, nothing would have ever
| made it.
|
| It's not as if there's a shortage of dangerous predators in
| Australia, even to this day.
|
| Just because an article hand waves an explanation doesn't make
| it so.
| acyou wrote:
| It takes surprisingly few generations to evolve traits. If
| there is a distribution of skittishness and a high pass
| filter takes away everything under a given limit, you'll get
| rapid evolution.
|
| As another example, urban populations of animals have evolved
| to tolerate noise in the span of very few generations.
|
| Giant flightless goose- very tasty!
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> due to the lack of natural predators, the wildlife in the
| Galapagos is known for being extremely tame without
| instinctual fear._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_wildlife
|
| We have actual evidence that it is a developed instinct. If
| you've ever been to the Galapagos islands, it's extremely
| obvious. The sea lions and pelicans casually walk up to the
| counter at the fish market as if they're just regulars
| shopping.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| It's worth noting there is also evidence that the Australian
| aborigines changed the climate, making Australia drier, with
| their hunting practice of burning forest:
| https://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-a...
| defrost wrote:
| Strictly speaking there's no _evidence_ just _suggestion_ and
| _opinion_.
|
| Associate Professor Karl-Heinz Wyrwoll has littered his
| article with qualifiers:
|
| * During the last few decades, human-induced climate change
| has been a pervasive theme in the scientific literature.
|
| * Ruddiman's research, while not without its critics,
| suggests that these resultant climatic changes ...
|
| * This is the idea that early agriculturalists caused an
| anomalous reversal ...
|
| * He showed that vegetation clearing, overgrazing and burning
| may have had an impact ...
|
| * Tom Lyons' "bunny fence" experiments have drawn attention
| to likely climate impacts and feedbacks ...
|
| etc.
|
| I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the notions put
| forward, just highlighting that the article is not as you
| paraphrased it.
| chownie wrote:
| No, that is what constitutes the word evidence, I think
| you've mistaken the meaning of _proof_ for the meaning of
| evidence.
|
| There is evidence that aborigines affected the climate, but
| there is not proof.
| lmpdev wrote:
| I'm not aware of it changing our climate but it's an
| essential process even today
|
| We back burn areas most likely to cause uncontrollable
| bushfires in the future
|
| Most of the continent requires fire, with the notable
| exception of Tassie and some rainforests scattered throughout
| the mainland
| Jedd wrote:
| I think the suggestion is that the flora ~80,000 ya did
| _not_ need fire so much as it does today, and that the
| change in fire requirement was a _result of_ broad-scale,
| regular, frequent, intentionally lit fires.
|
| Adaptation and species selection has resulted in what we
| have now -- as distinct from finding ourselves in a land
| that happens to need regular burning.
|
| Contrast us with comparable latitudes (15-35 from the
| equator) on other landmasses.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Agreed. That is also my understanding as well.
|
| In Brazil, transpiration from the Amazon rainforest
| produces more water vapour than the amount of water
| transported by the Amazon river. This is known as an
| atmospheric river (e.g. [1]) and is now seen as critical
| to the Brazilian climate. I think the theory is that wide
| spread burning in Australia destroyed the atmospheric
| river there, which led to a much drier continent than
| existed before humans arrived.
|
| [1]: https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-
| rivers
| hyperthesis wrote:
| The climate change created land bridges. https://xkcd.com/552
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Must be why Canadian geese are so aggressive.
|
| Jokes aside bet they tasted good.
| irrational wrote:
| I'm imagining a two meter high Canadian Goose. Completely
| terrifying.
| 9dev wrote:
| Two and a half!
| Etheryte wrote:
| A goose the size of a moose.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Tyrannosaurus cousin.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Dude, this is an ugly bird.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Looks pretty to me. Prettier than most humans.
| dymk wrote:
| Takes all kinds
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Their extinction was so rapid that only one poorly preserved
| skull was thought to have survived, leaving much to learn about
| this enormous bird.
|
| It's not obvious to me how the speed of extinction would affect
| the number or quality of preserved skeletons.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| That doesn't look very scary. More like a six-foot turkey.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| If it had the temperament of a cassowary it would be absolutely
| terrifying.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| A challenger to the laser Kiwi approaches.
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