The first Australians ate giant eggs

Proteins isolated from shell fragments of prehistoric eggs found in Australian sands

confirm that the first people of the continent ate the eggs of a two-meter tall bird that disappeared more than 47,000 years ago. Discuss

Burn marks discovered on scraps of ancient shells several years ago suggested early Australians cooked and ate the large eggs of a long-extinct bird.

An international team of scientists placed the animal on the evolutionary tree by comparing protein sequences from fossil eggs with those encoded in the genomes of living bird species.

According to findings published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ancient eggs belonged to Genyornis: a huge flightless bird with tiny wings and massive legs that roamed prehistoric Australia.

Fossil remains show that Genyornisreached more than two meters in height, weighed 220-240 kilograms and laid eggs the size of melons weighing about 1.5 kg. It was one of the Australian "megafauna" that disappeared several thousand years after humans appeared, suggesting that humans played a role in its disappearance.