Researchers discover prehistoric bird skull once believed to belong to a crocodile

The almost complete skull fossil can be found in the Geiseltal Collection (Uni Halle/Michael Stache)

Decades after it was first unearthed, an international team of researchers have correctly identified the “unique” skull of a bird they believe lived 45 million years ago.

The flightless bird is known as a “diatryma,” and was first uncovered in the 1950s, but was initially “misidentified as a crocodile skull,” experts say.

The skull was found in a former mining area in Germany’s Geiseltal region. Its long-overlooked presence led to a recent rediscovery by scientists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the Senckenberg Research Institute, and the Natural History Museum in Frankfurt.

“This research expands our understanding of the Eocene Epoch in the Geiseltal even though the excavations were completed long ago,” says Michael Stache, the geological preparator at MLU, who came across the fossil “by chance” several years ago.

He says it wasn’t until he realized the mistake that he began restoring the fossil, combining it with another object from MLU’s 50,000-piece Geiseltal Collection.

According to a news release, Senckenberg Institute researcher Gerald Mayr examined the fossil and confirmed that it belonged to a diatryma.

The only other fully preserved skull that exists is housed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

“This shows once again that many of the most interesting discoveries in palaeontology occur in museum collections,” says Gerald Mayr. “Just a few years ago, nobody would have thought that the Geiseltal Collection would contain such surprises.”

The research also shows that, until about a decade ago, scientists believed diatryma hunted prehistoric horses in the Geiseltal. However, more recent studies have determined the bird was actually a herbivore.

The report emphasizes that while the Geiseltal Collection contains around 40 specimens of diatryma, Stache notes that this skull is one of the rarest.