''Cygnus falconeri'', the giant swan, ( Maltese: ) is an extinct, very large

swan Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Som ...

known from

Middle Pleistocene The Chibanian, widely known by its previous designation of Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. Th ...

-aged deposits from

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

and

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

. Its dimensions are described as exceeding those of the living

mute swan The mute swan (''Cygnus olor'') is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home ...

by one-third, which would give a bill-to-tail length of about (based on 145–160 cm for '' C. olor''.). By comparison to the bones of living swans, it can be estimated that it weighed around and had a wingspan of about . It would have been taller, though not heavier, than the region's dwarf elephants. Due to its size, it may have been flightless. It became extinct before the increase in

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...

activity in the region (see Holocene extinction event), so its disappearance is thought to have resulted from extreme climate fluctuations or the arrival of superior

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill t ...

s and

competitors Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indivi ...

. Its bones are exhibited at

Għar Dalam Għar Dalam ("Cave of Dalam" (a fifteenth century family name), ) is a 144 metre long phreatic tube and cave, or cul-de-sac, located in the outskirts of Birżebbuġa, Malta. The cave contains the bone remains of animals that were stranded and su ...

museum in

Birżebbuġa Birżebbuġa (; sometimes shortened to B'Buġa) is a seaside town in the Southern Region of Malta, close to Marsaxlokk. It is approximately from the capital Valletta, and it has a population of 9,736 as of March 2014. The town is popular amon ...

, Malta.

References

†falconeri Pleistocene birds Quaternary birds of Europe Birds described in 1865 Fossil taxa described in 1865 {{swan-stub