There’s a new champion in the featherweight boxing division. According to a new study, paleontologists have discovered that an extinct flightless bird from Jamaica swung its unusually thick, club-like wingtips to fend off predators and rivals from its own species alike. The bird, a type of ibis known as Xenicibis, lived on the Caribbean island until about 12,000 years ago. In 1995, a team of paleontologists looking for remains of an extinct giant rodent chanced across a collection of Xenicibis fossils exquisitely preserved in one of the hundreds of limestone caves that dot Jamaica’s terrain. The nearly complete skeletons revealed a chicken-sized bird with thin upper-arm bones that curved and thickened greatly toward their wingtips. Yale University paleontologist Nicholas Longrich, lead author of the study which appeared last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, didn’t know what to make of the unusual wing shape.

“It was bizarre,” he said. “No one had seen anything like it. … No other bird has or had anything remotely similar.”