Giant Terror Birds Used Stabbing Beaks to Kill Prey

[n2doc]

By Jess McNally August 18, 2010



When South America was still an isolated continent, terror birds were the creatures you didn’t want to mess with. Flightless, standing up to seven feet tall, and with giant, stabbing beaks, these birds killed their prey with fierce, axe-like motions.

Now scientists have used CT scans and computer modeling to reconstruct the feeding behavior and interior skull anatomy of one of 18 known species of terror bird, Andalgalornis steulleti, which lived in northwest Argentina until about six million years ago. A. steulleti was a mid-sized terror bird, standing 4.5 feet tall and weighing about 90 pounds.

“CT scanning extinct animals is exciting because you never really know what you’ll find inside,” said paleontologist Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University, co-author of the study published in PLoS ONE August 18. “But you don’t need a CT scan to tell that this was one huge, bad-ass bird.”

Terror birds, known scientifically as phorusrhacids, evolved in isolation in South America about 60 million years ago. The last of the terror birds died out shortly after South America and North America were joined a few million years ago. There is nothing like terror birds living today. Their closest relatives, called seriemas, are also predators, but don’t share anatomical features such as the fused skull.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/terrorbird/

[tabasco]

1. Damn.

That's some fucked up shit.

[semillama]

2. The colonization of the Americas by Homo sapiens

may have been quite different if these things were still around.

[Phoonzang]

3. Yeah....a lot more exciting.

Natural selection would have probably led to a American natives being able to run really, really fast as well. :)