Gargantuavis

Gargantuan bird

• Gargantua · French (literary) · giant character from Rabelais
• avis · Latin · bird

The name combines Gargantua, the giant from François Rabelais's 16th-century French novels, with the Latin word for "bird". It refers to the animal's large size. It was a big, probably flightless bird, much larger than most other Late Cretaceous birds known from Europe.

Named by

Buffetaut and Le Loeuff

Year named

1998

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stages

Campanian – Maastrichtian

Found in

Southern France (e.g. Villespassans in Aude and Fox-Amphoux in Var)

Known from fragmentary remains, notably a pelvis (synsacrum) and limb bones. It is a large, probably flightless bird, so it is a dinosaur in the cladistic sense, since birds are theropod dinosaurs. The type species is G. philoinos. Its exact relationships within Avialae are uncertain, and the age of some specimens is debated.