About 40 million years ago, during the Eocene Epoch and long before man walked the Earth, the first parrot-type birds lived in the areas we now know as England, Austria and Germany. With no people to draw their likeness or write about their captivating ways, the only way we know that parrots existed is through fossilized remains. Some of the most important pieces of the puzzle were the bones of the foot, identifying the bird as zygodactylous, with the inner two toes facing forward and the two outer toes facing back. This is a characteristic parrots share with only a few other species, such as woodpeckers and cuckoos.
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