Heracles

Heracles inexpectatus size

Heracles is a giant fossil parrot species from New Zealand that lived during the early Miocene approximately 16 to 19 million years ago. The type and only species of the genus is H. inexpectatus.

Description

The species was described from fossils discovered in 2008 at Saint Bathans, Otago, New Zealand. It is believed that the species stood up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) tall and weighed approximately 7 kg (15 lb). Initial analysis suggests it is from the superfamily Strigopoidea, which consists of three confirmed genera of parrots: Nestor (kea and Kākā), Strigops (Kākāpō) and the fossil Nelepsittacus. It may have been the ancestor of the Kākāpō.

The species was likely flightless, its robust beak could crack open more than the conventional parrot foods of fruit, nuts, and berries. Aki to the kakapo, Heracles may have used it strong beak to climb trees. It shared its environment with five other species of parrot in the genus Nelepsittacus, as well as dozens of other bird species in the St Bathans Fauna. Heracles inexpectatus is the largest parrot known to have existed. Media releases described the new species as the "Hercules parrot" and reported the nickname given by the palaeontologist Mike Archer of "squawkzilla".

The largest known species of Psittaciformes, which includes New Zealand Parrots, “true” parrots, and cockatoos, it is estimated to have been around one metre in height, with a body mass of seven kilograms, and presumed to have been flightless, terrestrial and perhaps arboreal. Island gigantism has been observed in other orders of birds, especially in New Zealand and Fiji, but this species exceeds the proportions of any extant or fossil species of the parrot order. The previously known record for size was the arboreal and nocturnal Strigops habroptilus, the Kākāpō of modern New Zealand.

Paleobiology

The fossilized tarsi were deposited in a rich and mixed assemblage of animal remains, including other large species of avians such as the moa, anatids and an eagle, the bones of which are usually fragmented. The type material of Heracles inexpectatus is the longest evidence obtained at the site, which rarely produces fossil longer than 100 millimetres. The time of deposition is determined as sixteen to nineteen million years ago, in an area associated with a freshwater lacustrine system, in wet forest dominated by cycad, palm and casuarina species, along with a diverse array of other avian fauna.

The species appears to have occupied a niche in the region's ecology, unfilled by mammals, that favored the insular gigantism exhibited by some other avian species of the region.

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