This is Bird Note.

Swans like this hooper swan are impressive animals, they are among the largest flying

birds around today, but 11.5 million years ago, two extinct species from Japan took an

even more epic direction.

But today's swans, Anacasigna Hajime and Anacasigna Yoshiensis were quite large,

but unlike their modern relatives, these birds lived most of their lives out at sea, and

their fossils revealed remarkable adaptations to this unusual lifestyle.

They had wide, spatula-shaped beaks, somewhat like modern shoveler ducks.

The dense bones of their wide hips let them remain stable on choppy waters while filtering

plankton from the sea surface with their oversized heads.

Their wings weren't built for flight, but had the musculature and range of motion to suggest

they weren't useless.

In combination with the flexible tail, they could form a cradle for carrying chicks

on their back, which some swans still do now with their young.

The remarkable anatomy of Anacasigna reveals a creature uniquely adapted to thrive in

an environment quite unlike what you'd expect for a swan.

To quote the scientists who named it in a 2022 study, in a sense, it is the ultimate

bird that ever existed.

For Bird Note, I'm a Dave Enceladine.