Fossils have for centuries given an insight into the creatures that ancient humans roamed Earth with. And this is exactly how a giant flightless bird, believed to weigh about a ton and with a height of 3.5 meters, came to be the latest discovery. Researchers have identified the bird as Pachystruthio dmanisensis.

The bird lived about 1.5 million to two million years ago. Fossils of this giant bird were found in Taurida Cave on the coast of the Black Sea. And this is the first time that fossils of a bird like this has been found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Researcher say the prehistoric bird would have lived alongside the giant hyenas and sabre-toothed cats, in the Ice Age. CNN said researchers think the bird probably reached the Black Sea region by crossing Turkey and the Southern Caucasus. They believe ancient Europeans may have encountered these birds. Scientists say the giant bird may have been a source of meat, bones, feathers and eggshells for the ancient humans.

The lead author of the study of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikita Zelenkov in a statement said she thought the fossil to be of a Malagasy elephant bird when she calculated the weight of the thigh bone. Zelenkov reasoned that no birds of this size have ever been reported from Europe. “However, the structure of the bone unexpectedly told a different story," Zelenkov said, adding that the new find is similar to elephant birds that went extinct in the 1700s. “The femur is similar to that of the modern ostrich, which can reach a speed of 43 miles per hour.”

The bird has been described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology as having weighed about 450kg, which is twice the weight of the largest extinct moas from New Zealand, three times heavier than the largest living bird, the common ostrich, and nearly as heavy as an adult polar bear. “The long, slim thigh bone shows it was fast on its feet. Other remains recovered from the cave offer some explanations as to why that may have helped, as the giant bird lived alongside some of the most formidable predators of the Ice Age, from sabre-toothed cats to other over-sized carnivores, including giant cheetahs and giant hyenas,” said the Journal.

Zelenkov said they don’t know when it became extinct. He said although they don’t have evidence, the bird might have spread across most western terrorities.

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