Dynatoaetus

Dynatoaetus is an extinct genus of large bird of prey from the Pleistocene of Australia. It is among the largest known raptors of the region, second only to the Haast's eagle of New Zealand, with estimates suggesting a weight of up to . Although most closely related to modern vultures, it shows clear adaptations towards an active predatory lifestyle in the form of robust, powerful talons. This may either hint at it retaining these ancestral features from the closely related serpent eagles or show that it convergently evolved these features as it took on a similar lifestyle. Due to their size and robust bones, it is thought that Dynatoaetus would have been capable of taking large prey items like kangaroos, giant wombats and flightless birds. There are two species within the genus, the type species Dynatoaetus gaffae and the somewhat smaller Dynatoaetus pachyosteus, both of which inhabited the same part of Australia at the same time.

==History and naming== The first fossil remains now identified as belonging to Dynatoaetus were discovered in 1956 and 1969 in Mairs Cave, located in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. This material included a variety of body parts, including toes, the upper arm and a sternum. The bones, which were found around into the cave, were covered in a thin calcite layer showing that the bones had not been buried and instead preserved simply lying on the floor of the cave. In later years fossils of large raptors were recovered from several more fossil sites across Australia, including Cooper Creek within the Lake Eyre Basin and the Victoria Fossil Cave (both in South Australia), and the Wellington Caves in New South Wales. However it was not until the discovery of 28 additional remains from Mairs Cave, including skull bones and vertebrae, that the various remains were found to have belonged to a single species. The discovery of these remains was made by a group of recreational speleologists and palaeontologists, which entered the cave with the express purpose of finding more fossils of the bird. Many of the bones of Mairs Cave were found to have belonged to a single individual bird, which served as the holotype when the fossils were described as a distinct genus and species by Ellen K. Mather et al. in 2023. Later that same year a second species was described from the Victoria Fossil Cave on the basis of a variety of bones including a humerus, various other limb bones, a quadrate and a partial pelvis. This species, which was noted for being notably smaller than D. gaffae, was named D. pachyosteus.