Fossil bones of an eagle, Australia's largest bird of prey: find by Flinders University team in South Australian cave
Comparisons (at left) of the tarsometatarsus (footbone) of Dynatoaetus gaffae and the wedge-tailed eagle, with estimates of their sizes. Centre: Flinders University speleological society volunteers descending the Mairs Cave in the southern Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Inset: Paleontologist Dr Ellen Mather who led the expedition.
Images (from left) by Ellen Mather, Aaron Camens and Tania Bawden
Fossil bones of a 60,000-year-old eagle, Australia’s largest ever bird of prey, found in the Southern Flinders Ranges of South Australia, were revealed in 2023.
The 28 fossil bones were found by Flinders University speleological society volunteers, led by paleontologist Dr Ellen Mather, in Mairs Cave. The team who descended the cave had clues to the eagle remains’ whereabouts from a South Australian Museum relic card telling where four large fossil bones had been collected by cavers in 1956 and 1969.
The added 28 bones, providing much of the eagle skeleton, were found by the Flinders University team scattered about deep among the boulders at the cave site. Maher said that, besides creating “a better picture and description of these magnificent long-lost giant extinct birds”, the discovery also connected to other bones found in the Naracoorte Caves, Wellington Caves and near Cooper Creek in the Lake Eyre basin of South Australia: “This discovery reveals that this incredible family of birds was once much more diverse in Australia.”
The Mairs Cave giant bird was named Dynatoaetus gaffae (Gaff’s powerful eagle), honouring Victorian paleontologist Priscilla Gaff, who first described some of these fossils in her 2002 master of science thesis. The “humongous” eagle had a wingspan up to three metres and powerful talons spreading up to 30 centimetres – able to grab a juvenile giant kangaroo, large flightless bird or megafauna of its era.
Dynatoaetus gaffae was almost as large as the world’s largest eagles once found on the islands of New Zealand and Cuba. It would have bird existed with still-living species such as the wedge-tailed eagle. But, with the former diversity of Australian birds of prey, the wedge-tailed eagle in the past probably more limited in where it lived and what it ate. The Dynatoaetus, both eagle and vulture-like, was part of a generation of raptors unique to Australia until around 50,000 years ago.