The old line, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” could once have applied to the world’s largest known bird, Argentavis magnificens, which, with a 23-foot wingspan, was about the same size as a Cessna 152 light aircraft.
A study published in today’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Science found that the bird was probably too big to accommodate both wing-flapping in flight and standing takeoff by its own muscle power.
Regular readers will not be surprised to learn this crazy bird lived in Argentina.
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Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Digital Journalism Project at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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