Large Megapode Bird Identified from Flores Cave Bone | Sci.News

A new species of extinct megapode bird — a ground-dwelling relative of the chicken that was several times heavier than its living cousin — has been identified from a single fragment of leg bone found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores.

The newly described species belongs to the megapodes (also known as incubator birds or mound-builders), a group of medium-sized to large terrestrial birds with large legs and feet with sharp claws.

Scientifically named Megapodius rokusi, the ancient bird weighed approximately 3.9 kg.

The only megapode living on Flores today, the orange-footed megapode (Megapodius reinwardt), weighs between 0.5 and 1.2 kg.

“Megapodes are a group of birds that incubate their eggs by burying them, exploiting environmental heat rather than body heat,” said University Museum of Bergen paleontologist Hanneke Meijer and colleagues.

“They are almost entirely limited to the region east of Wallace’s line in the Philippines, eastern Indonesia, Melanesia and Australia.”

“Interestingly, megapodes do not occur in mainland Southeast Asia nor on the Greater Sunda Islands.”

“This peculiar distribution has been variously attributed to be an ancient relic distribution, the result of the introduction and/or domestication of Megapodius on islands in the west, competition between megapodes and phasianids, and the presence of bird-eating mammalian carnivores on the Asian mainland and the Greater Sundas.”

The fossil — the lower half of a right tarsometatarsus (a lower leg bone) — was excavated in 2009 at Liang Bua, the cave where the small-bodied human relative Homo floresiensis was found.

The bone came from sediments dated to roughly 190,000 to 120,000 years ago.

The specimen is larger than the same bone in any known living or extinct species of Megapodius.

It is also the first fossil megapode described from Wallacea, the island region between mainland Asia and Australia.

“The species name honors the Indonesian zooarchaeologist Rokus Due Awe,” the researchers said.

“He played a seminal role in the analysis of faunal remains and he was the first person to correctly identify the hominin bones and teeth that ultimately became part of the hypodigm of Homo floresiensis following the discovery of the famous partial skeleton in 2003.”

“Megapodius rokusi is the first species of megapode named after an Indonesian researcher.”

With no shoulder or wing bones recovered, the scientists cannot tell whether the bird could fly.

They also do not know when it went extinct or whether it lived alongside the smaller species still found on Flores.

They float the possibility that the living species reached the island only after the larger bird had disappeared.

“Megapode eggs have a yolk that makes up about 50-60% of the egg weight and are considered very nutritious,” the authors said.

“The distinct mounds and communal burrowing grounds make megapode eggs and chicks highly susceptible to predation.”

“Their eggs would have been an accessible source of nutrients for both Homo floresiensis and modern humans before and after 50,000 years ago, respectively.”

The study was published in October 2026 in The Alcheringa, an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.

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Hanneke J. M. Meijer et al. A new species of megapode (Galliformes: Megapodiidae) from the Pleistocene of Liang Bua, Flores. Alcheringa, published online October 22, 2026; doi: 10.1080/03115518.2026.2741158