''Cygnus falconeri'', the giant swan, (
Maltese: ) is an extinct, very large
swan known from
Middle Pleistocene
The Chibanian, widely known by its previous designation of Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. Th ...
-aged deposits from
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
and
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographi ...
. Its dimensions are described as exceeding those of the living
mute swan by one-third, which would give a bill-to-tail length of about (based on 145–160 cm for ''
C. olor''
[.]). By comparison to the bones of living swans, it can be estimated that it weighed around and had a wingspan of about . It would have been taller, though not heavier, than the region's
dwarf elephants. Due to its size, it may have been
flightless. It became extinct before the increase in
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
activity in the region (see
Holocene extinction event
The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event during the Holocene epoch. The extinctions span numerous families of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, ...
), so its disappearance is thought to have resulted from extreme
climate fluctuations or the arrival of superior
predator
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
s and
competitors.
Its bones are exhibited at
Għar Dalam museum in
Birżebbuġa
Birżebbuġa (; sometimes shortened to B'Buġa) is a seaside town in the Southern Region of Malta, close to Marsaxlokk. It is approximately from the capital Valletta, and it has a population of 9,736 as of March 2014.
The town is popular amon ...
, Malta.
References
†falconeri
Pleistocene birds
Quaternary birds of Europe
Birds described in 1865
Fossil taxa described in 1865
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