Flying help for biggest bird

WEIGHING in at 150lb or more, the all-time biggest bird couldn’t just hop into the air and fly away, researchers say.

A team led by Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University used computer programs that were originally designed for aircraft to analyse the probable flight characteristics of Argentavis magnificens, a giant bird that lived in South America six million years ago.

Like today’s condors and other large birds, Argentavis would have had to rely on updrafts to remain in the air. Doing so, it could have soared for long distances, they concluded in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Remains of Argentavis have been found in the plains of northern Argentina, called pampas, and also in the foothills of the Andes.

With a wingspan of about 23ft, Argentavis is the largest known flying bird, the researchers said.

By measuring the size of the bones they determined how large its flight muscles would have been, and calculated that it would not have been capable of take-off or of sustained flight just by flapping its wings.