A giant crane from southern Germany
Researchers from Frankfurt and Tübingen say the skull of a very large crane found at the Hammerschmiede fossil site in Allgäu, Bavaria, is more than eleven million years old. It is the earliest evidence of such a large crane in Europe, the paleontologists say. The fossil most closely resembles the skull of today's long-beaked Siberian crane, according to Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt, and Thomas Lechner and Professor Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. Late last year Hammerschmiede made headlines with the discovery of the bipedal great ape Danuvius guggenmosi, nicknamed Udo. The newly-discovered crane may well have been the largest bird around at the time.