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An extinct flightless bird from Jamaica fought rivals and predators using wings evolved into clubs, scientists suggest.
The boney bludgeons carried by Xenicibis xympithecus are unlike anything else known in the bird world - or in mammals, reptiles or amphibians.
Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, the scientists report finding bones that had apparently been broken by another bird's club.
The species may have survived until less than 10,000 years ago.
A member of the ibis family, it was probably about the size of a chicken, but with an infinitely more robust armoury.
Fossils show that the metacarpus - one of the hand bones - was elongated and much bigger than in related species, with very thick walls.
This allowed the wings to function in combat as a jointed club or flail, the researchers write.
We don't really know how they would have used these clubs, but we do know that modern ibises grab each other by the beak and pound away with their wings, said Nicholas Longrich, from Yale University in the US.
And we analysed two bones that had been broken during fighting, including a humerus (upper arm bone) that had been snapped in half - it had started to re-heal, although the two ends hadn't knitted together, he told BBC News.
Dr Longrich's colleague in this research, Storrs Olson from the Smithsonian Institution, was one of the scientists who first identified Xenicibis xympithecus back in the 1970s.
Rest of article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12115776
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