Artist’s rendering of the Black Sea big bird Pachystruthio, which researchers estimate was comparable to Madagascar’s elephant birds and New Zealand’s moa. (Credit: Andrey Atuchin)

Towering more than ten feet tall and weighing in at about 1,000 pounds, big bird Pachystruthio was a big deal. The animal, which weighed about as much as a male polar bear, roamed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. That’s thousands of miles — and across the equator — from the better-known avian giants.

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