Artist's impression of the Danish Blue Parrot. Image by David Waterhouse.
UCD based researchers have discovered fossil remains of parrots in Scandinavia which are more than 55 million years old. The fossil wing bone represents the oldest, largest and most northerly discovery of parrot remains.
The findings, published in Palaeontology this month, indicate that parrots, which today only live in the tropics and the southern hemisphere, once flew over what is now Norway and Denmark. This suggests that parrots may have first evolved in Northern Europe, much earlier than had previously been considered.
Dr David Waterhouse, the lead author of the scientific paper worked with a team of researchers including Dr Gareth Dyke from the UCD School of Biology And Environmental Science to identify the bird from a small piece of wing bone. The newly discovered species is officially named Mopsitta tanta, but it has been nick-named the Danish Blue Parrot.
“It isn’t as unbelievable as you might at first think that a parrot was found so far north. When Mopsitta was alive, most of Northern Europe was experiencing a warm period, with a large shallow tropical lagoon covering much of Germany, South East England and Denmark,” says Dr Waterhouse. “We have to remember that this was only 10 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out, and some strange things were happening with animal life all over the planet.”
“No Southern Hemisphere fossil parrot has been found older than about 15 million years old, so this new evidence suggests that parrots evolved right here in the Northern Hemisphere before diversifying further South in the tropics later on.”
Dr Waterhouse, who is currently assistant curator of natural history at Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, was a PhD student at UCD when he identified the mysterious bone that was received from the Moler Museum on the Isle of Mors in Denmark. Waterhouse had received a scholarship from UCD and funding from the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET).
