Australornis

The fossil was discovered in 2009 by Leigh Love in the Paleocene Waipara Greensand of north Canterbury on the South Island of New Zealand. The fossil was deposited in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, where it lay in museum shelves for a number of years, as earthquakes severely affected the working of the Museum staff. The fossil was described in 2014 by Dr Gerald Mayr, from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main, and Dr Paul Scofield of the Canterbury Museum, who published their findings in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. == Description ==

Australornis grew roughly to about long, and has been likened to a pied shag in size. == References ==