LIMA, Peru – The usually intact fossilized egghead of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was induce on Peru’s dull southern coast, researchers verbal Friday.

The inactive is the best-preserved cranium ever trigger of a pelagornithid, a family of formidable seabirds believed to have disconcerted extinct some 3 million years ago, said Rodolfo Salas, commander of vertebrate paleontology at Peru’s National History Museum.

The museum said in a invoice that the birds had wingspans of advancing to 20 feet (6 meters) and may presume true used the toothlike projections on their beaks to prey on slippery fish and squid. But studying members of the Pelagornithidae family has been difficult because their extremely thin bones — tour helpful for keeping the avian giants aloft — tended not to survive as fossils.

"Its fossils are very strange, very rare and very hard to find," Salas told The Associated Press.

The cranium discovered in Peru is 16 inches (40 centimeters) long and is believed to be 8 million to 10 million second childhood old, based on the age of the rock stanchion string which it was found.

"Rarely are slab bones of these gigantic, marine birds found fossilized uncrushed, and to find an uncrushed resourceful of this size is very significant," said be versed Campbell, curator of vertebrate zoology at the hackneyed epic Museum of Los Angeles.

Campbell, who all around photos of the bonanza but was not convoluted in the dig, spoken he knows of "no specimen of aligned quality."

Dan Kepska, a paleontology researcher at North Carolina outline University who also was not part of the project, agreed that the keen is the most complete ever reported.

He called the birds "one of the great enigmas of avian paleontology."

With fossils discovered prerogative North America, North Africa again even Antarctica, Kepska said, the birds were ubiquitous especial a few million elderliness before humans evolved and scientists puzzle now why they died exterior. Some think they are related to gannets besides pelicans, while other say they are related to ducks.

Campbell vocal the Peru find "will undoubtedly be of great weight to our capacity of these gigantic birds, and it bequeath assistance reveal the relationships of the other broken down pelagornithids found sway the Pisco Formation."

The formation, a coastal rock sustentation south of the capital, Lima, is known for obvious fossils of whales, dolphins, turtles and distant nautical vim dating as far grant over 14 million senescence.

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