Giant Chicken Relative Lived in the Cave of the Ancient ‘Hobbits’ Over 100,000 Years Ago

A giant prehistoric bird has been discovered in the Indonesian cave famous for its ancient "hobbits."

The Indonesian island of Flores was once home to tiny humans, dwarf elephants, giant storks, and Komodo dragons. Now, scientists have identified another unusual resident of this prehistoric world: a giant, chicken-like bird.

Weighing an estimated 3.9 kilograms (8.6 pounds), the extinct bird was several times heavier than its closest living relatives on Flores. It belonged to a peculiar group of birds that bury their eggs and let the heat of the earth incubate them.

The discovery comes from a single leg bone unearthed in 2009 at Liang Bua, the same cave where scientists discovered Homo floresiensis, the diminutive ancient humans nicknamed the “hobbit people.” Overlooked for 17 years, the fossil has now been identified as a new species, Megapodius rokusi, and the largest known member of its genus.

A Giant Bird Among Hobbits and Dwarf Elephants

The fossil of the giant bird was excavated in 2009, nearly seven meters beneath the floor of Liang Bua. Indonesian zooarchaeologist Rokus Due Awe was the first to recognize it as a bird bone, but nothing more than that could be made of it. Megapodius rokusi lived approximately 190,000 to 120,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene.

When paleontologist Hanneke Meijer of the University Museum of Bergen and her colleagues examined it more closely, they noticed something unusual.

The specimen consists of the lower half of a right tarsometatarsus, a bone in the lower leg that connects to the toes. But the joints where the toes attach differed from those of known megapodes. One joint angled outward unusually far, while another featured a pronounced groove and rounded depression.

Comparisons with living and extinct species confirmed that the combination of features was unique. Bingo! The researchers had found a new species.

Its size was equally striking. Using measurements of the bone and a statistical relationship between leg-bone dimensions and body mass, they estimated that M. rokusi weighed approximately 3.9 kilograms. That might not sound like much by modern standards, but today’s huge farm chickens are the result of intensive industrial farming; the chicken’s direct ancestors were quite tiny.

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For a better comparison, the orange-footed scrubfowl (Megapodius reinwardt), the only megapode living on Flores today, weighs just 0.5 to 1.2 kilograms. This newly identified ancient species was therefore roughly three to eight times heavier.

Prehistoric Flores was a strange place where evolution seemed to play tricks with size. Elephants became dwarfs, while birds and rats grew enormous. And among these creatures lived Homo floresiensis, a tiny human relative that stood just 1.06 meters (3.5 feet) tall but made stone tools and hunted animals much larger than itself.

The island was home to Stegodon, an extinct elephant relative with tusks. Some of its bones recovered from Liang Bua bear cut marks, suggesting that the little humans butchered these animals. Komodo dragons also roamed the landscape, alongside vultures and unusually large rodents.

But perhaps the most intimidating bird was Leptoptilos robustus, a giant marabou stork that stood roughly 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall and weighed an estimated 16 kilograms (35 pounds). Meijer and Due Awe first described it in 2010, initially suspecting it had largely lost the ability to fly. However, a 2022 study of additional fossils showed that this enormous bird almost certainly could fly. It may have scavenged elephant carcasses, potentially competing with the island’s tiny humans for food.

Now, Megapodius rokusi joins this remarkable prehistoric menagerie. Whether it lived alongside all these animals remains uncertain, but its discovery offers another glimpse of just how different Flores once was.

The Birds That Let the Earth Incubate Their Eggs

Megapodes are among the strangest parents in the bird world.

Unlike chickens, which sit on their eggs to keep them warm, megapodes bury their eggs in soil, sand, or mounds of vegetation. Natural environmental heat does the incubating.

Their chicks emerge exceptionally well-developed and require virtually no parental care.

Modern orange-footed scrubfowl build incubation mounds in open forest, and the species still occurs around Liang Bua today.

But did its giant prehistoric relative behave similarly?

Scientists cannot say. Some megapodes build mounds, while others dig burrows. The nesting strategies depend partly on local environmental conditions.

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The ancient landscape around Liang Bua consisted of grasslands interspersed with forest, potentially offering suitable nesting grounds. And these nests might also have attracted hungry predators, including ancient humans.

Megapode eggs are attractive as food. They contain unusually large yolks, representing approximately 50% to 60% of their weight. And the species’ concentrated nesting sites can make them easy targets.

Could Homo floresiensis have eaten the giant bird’s eggs?

It’s certainly plausible. A 2016 study in Nature dated the known hobbit skeletal remains to approximately 100,000–60,000 years ago, while stone tools associated with the species extend back about 190,000 years.

What Happened to Flores’s Giant Bird?

The biggest mystery is what ultimately happened to Megapodius rokusi.

Without wing or shoulder bones, scientists cannot determine whether it could fly. Most living megapodes are capable fliers, but some extinct relatives apparently lost that ability.

Its disappearance is equally uncertain.

The species might have survived until approximately 60,000 years ago, around the period when several other animals associated with Liang Bua’s ancient ecosystem disappeared from its fossil record. Alternatively, it could have vanished much earlier.

The scientists named the bird after Due Awe, who died in 2015 and played a crucial role in identifying the original Homo floresiensis fossils.

Seventeen years after he first recognized the fragment as a bird bone, it has become a new species bearing his name.

The findings appeared in the journal Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.