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Re: large fossil birds



The largest Mesozoic volant bird was Enantiornis leali, at about a meter long. You won't find anything over the Cenozoic mass limit (~550 kg) for birds in the Mesozoic without invoking Utahraptor, Deinocheirus or the larger therizinosaurs.

Mickey Mortimer

The biggest terrestrial bird from the Mesozoic bird is perhaps the presumably flightless _Gargantuavis_ or a similar-sized French bird (unnamed, but also from the LK), around the size of an ostrich - but there may be hesperornithiforms that were bigger (=heavier in this context) - I'm not sure. I don't know what the largest volant Mesozoic bird was, but it may be the soaring _Sapeornis_ - but even this was only around the size of a gull. There might have been larger enantiornithines by the LK.

Cheers

Tim