First Aquila ("true") eagle

The first eagles belonging to the "true" eagle genus Aquila that are currently known to science all date back to the mid-to-late Miocene, approximately 12 million years ago, and constitute three distinct species. These are: A. bullockensis, A. delphinensis and A. pennatoides. The first of these lived in Australia; the other two are known from fossils found in deposits in Grive-Saint-Alban, France.

At present, the Australian species is known only from its type specimen or holotype, which is the distal end of a right humerus (upper arm/wing bone), and is housed in the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. It was originally obtained from Bullock Creek exposures of the Camfield Fossil Beds, in Australia's Northern Territory, and its species was formally described and named in 2010. Several other eagle-like fossil bones have also been found there that might belong to this species, but so far they have not been identified as they have yet to be the subject of a detailed study.