olelog

Hopefully you associate “Danish Blue” with delicious Danish cheese - a bit in the style of Roquefort and Stilton. This post is, however, about a parrot, bereft of life.

In the journal Palaeontology of May 2008 Waterhouse et al. describe two fossil parrots found in Denmark. They are so far the oldest fossil parrots, the most northerly found fossil parrots and one of them is the largest fossil parrot yet known. In fact all that remains of this early Danish parrot is a single upper wing bone (humerus). But, this small bone contains characteristic features that show that it is clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the size of a Yellow-crested Cockatoo. The bone, which is 6.5 cm long, was found on the island Mors in 2003, it is on display in a museum on Mors, the Molermuseum, and has now been determined by a team of palaeontologists. Image of bone in this Danish Article. With the present day climate there are no wild parrots (Psittacidae) in Denmark (although a small population of parakeets has established itself recently). Today parrots only live in the tropics and the southern hemisphere.

The new species, officially named 'Mopsitta tanta', has got the nick-name 'Danish Blue Parrot,' derived from a famous comedy sketch about a 'Norwegian Blue Parrot' in the 1970s BBC television programme 'Monty Python.' The Scandinavian connection makes links to Monty Python's notoriously demised bird irresistible, but the parallels go further. The famous sketch revolves around establishing that a bird purchased by John Cleese is a dead parrot, and these fossils are certainly dead.
The scientifique name Mopsitta tanta is derived from mo after moler (see below), psitta and tanta are latin for respectively 'parrot' and 'large' - the large ‘mo clay’ parrot. When Mopsitta was alive, which was only 10 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out, most of Northern Europe was experiencing a warm period, with a large shallow tropical lagoon covering much of Germany, South East England and Denmark. (See map. Green = land, white = sea, All of the present Denmark was covered by sea). Denmark was closer to the equator at that time, and the poles were not covered with ice as now.

The fossils were found in a sort of diatomite, locally called moler, meaning whitish clay. Moler consists of cirka 45-65 % silica and silica shells of algae (diatoms - see image below of modern marine diatoms under microscope), 30-45 % clay and 10 % volcanic ashes. The sea bottom was depleted of oxygen, and the thick moler deposits are rich in fossils, including fossils of some 30 different bird species. Most of these would together with flying insects, also fossilised, have flown in from the exposed land areas in what is now Norway and Sweden.

The Danish moler deposit is up to 60 m thick. In other parts of the world there are no known deposits above 10 m thick.

Apart from the Molermuseum on Mors there is another interesting little geological museum on the island of fur, with fossils found in the local moler cliffs.

Reference:
Waterhouse et al.
Two New Parrots (Psittaciformes) From the Lower Eocene Fur Formation of Denmark
Palaeontology, Volume 51 Issue 3 Page 575-582, May 2008

English links
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00777.x
http://www.ucd.ie/news/2008/05MAY08/150508_parrot.html
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/08051531.htm
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/05/16/video-monty-python-s-norwegian-blue-parrot-did-exist-89520-20419112/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=566600&in_page_id=1770

Danish links
http://politiken.dk/videnskab/article509541.ece
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2008/05/15/220046.htm?rss=true
http://ing.dk/artikel/88153?rss
http://stenfugle.blogs.ku.dk/
http://geologi.snm.ku.dk/nyheder_gm/nyhed160508/
http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-11591242.html?ss