Asian phoenix lived with dinos

Palaeontologists said on Wednesday they had found the fossilised remains of a giant bird that lived in Central Asia more than 65 million years ago, a finding which challenges theories about the diversity of early birds.

Palaeontologists said on Wednesday they had found the fossilised remains of a giant bird that lived in Central Asia more than 65 million years ago, a finding which challenges theories about the diversity of early birds.

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The creature may have been taller than an ostrich if it had been flightless and, if it flew, had a greater wingspan than that of the albatross, they reported in the British journal Biology Letters.

The scientists have named the bird Samrukia nessovi, after a mythological Kazakh phoenix known as the samruk, and after Lev Nessov, a celebrated Russian palaeontologist who died in 1995.

The estimate is based on a pair of mandibular rami, or the upright part of an L-shaped lower jawbone, that were found in Late Cretaceous sediment in Kyzylorda, southern Kazakhstan.

The bones measure 275 millimetres, indicating a skull that would have been a whopping 30 centimetres long.