> Shortly after humans arrived, however, Genyornis went extinct. The birds are thought to have been eaten into extinction, with climate change hastening their demise.

It’s funny how they (and all the other large mammals) survived for 1.8M years of massive global climate change but the period just after we arrived (like in the Americas) was what “hastened their demise” rather than the humans with clubs they hadn’t had time to evolve to be scared of, eating every last one of them.

Searching "giga-goose" before June 3rd brings up basically nothing, someone last year called this species a "gigantic goose" and a bunch of unrelated things. I wonder where the nickname came from, and how important it was towards getting this article published.

Also I wonder if there's a move away from "mega" towards "giga" as mega anything seems kinda small. I can't see "tera" ever being a thing, I can't think of an independent connection to some other word meaning large.

> Their extinction was so rapid that only one poorly preserved skull was thought to have survived, leaving much to learn about this enormous bird.

It's not obvious to me how the speed of extinction would affect the number or quality of preserved skeletons.

I'm generally curious about what these ancient megafauna tasted like. Especially this one now, seeing as humans apparently ate them to extinction. Someone start cloning monster geese!

That doesn't look very scary. More like a six-foot turkey.

I’m imagining a two meter high Canadian Goose. Completely terrifying.

An impressive bird, but still can't hold a candle to the Giant Moas of New Zealand, also extinct.

A challenger to the laser Kiwi approaches.

Tyrannosaurus cousin.

Dude, this is an ugly bird.

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