A new discovered leg bone from Columbia is likely to be from the large fellow member of thePhorusrhacidfamily – appropriately know as " threat snort " – we have yet found , and could have stood more than 3 meters tall . The squad describing the fossil thinks the individual it came from was 5 - 20 percent declamatory than the previous record - bearer .
Now that we knowbirds are dinosaurs , it is not surprising that a few reclaimed some of their former stature in the post - Cretaceous historic period . The most redoubtable birds of theCenozoichave commonly been on islands , like Madagascar’selephant birdsor New Zealand’smoa , where they face up less competitor from mammals .
ThePhorusrhacids , on the other hand , to the full take in their nicknames as “ scourge birds ” . Not only were they pith eaters , rather than living on fruit or seeds like most gargantuan birds , but they were apex predators for at least43 million yearsin South America where big mammals were abundant . They probably make full the same nichein Antarcticabefore it became icebound .
It’s only a part of a left tibiotarsus, but it indicates its owner was a terror bird larger than any found before.Image credit: Degrange et al., 2024, Palaeontology
The bone that expand terror birds ' size of it range is not novel , having been establish almost 20 age ago . However , when Cesar Perdomo of the Museo La Tormenta in Colombia found the fossil , he was not certain what it was . Now researchers have made a 3D modelling of the os and concluded it came from a phallus of the Phorusrhacids .
“ Terror birds lived on the ground , had limb adjust for running , and mostly eat other animal , ” explained co - author Dr Siobhan Cooke of Johns Hopkins University in astatement . Size calculations based on part of one bone are inevitably rough , but Cooke and co - authors count on it would have consider 156 kilo ( 343 pounds ) . With congenator equip with small footbones having approached 3 m ( 10 feet ) magniloquent , this one may well have surpass that tallness .
The fogy is from the Miocene , 12 million years ago , and is from the lower left leg , equivalent to a human shin . Its size made paleontologists doubt its origins , but scans bring out deep pits , a distinctive feature ofPhorusharcids’leg pearl . In addition to the natural stone pit , the scans also revealed teeth marks , in all likelihood from a member of the crocodilian order .
Cooke and co - authors of a composition draw the discovery think the bite came from aPurussaurus . Despite the ending of its name , Purussauruswas not a dinosaur , but it was just as terrifying : a 9 - meter ( 30 - foot ) long caiman .
“ We suspect that the threat shuttle would have expire as a upshot of its injuries given the size of it of crocodilians 12 million years ago , ” Cooke said .
Besides its size and suspected lawsuit of death , the discovery is singular for another grounds . Most terror bird fossils have been discover in Argentina and its environment . The Tatacoa Desert in Colombia , where this find was made , is north of the equator . Its dry canyons have been a racy source of fossils for more than a hundred year , butPhorusharcidshave not been find there before .
The authors believe this a signPhorusharcidswere not that rough-cut in what is now the Tatacoa , which was a rich river responsibility at the clip this picky mortal exist . On the other manus , Cooke acknowledged , “ It ’s potential there are fossil in existing collections that have n’t been discern yet as scourge birds because the off-white are less diagnostic than the lower ramification bone we found . ”
scourge birds or not , the region at the clip would have been a wildlife infotainment maker ’s dreaming . “ It ’s a unlike kind of ecosystem than we see today or in other parts of the world during a time period before South and North America were connect , ” Cooke tell . Examples includeglyptodonts(relatives of armadillo the size of cars ) , gargantuan ground sloths , hoofed beast filling the niches of zebra or impala in Africa , and even muck around whose ancestors had made theepic raft journeying .
AlthoughPhorusharcidfossils were much more common in the southerly one-half of South America , observe one so far northward is not a complete surprise . When Panama connected to South America , allowing species to interchange between the two continents , the northerners had the best of it . As far as we sleep with , terror bird were the only large predators from South America to make habit of the connection , subsequently being found in places like Texas . They seem to have made the cross around5 million yr agoand must have been in the neighborhood before that time . Nevertheless , antecedently none of the class had been found in South America north of southerly Peru , more than 2,000 kilometers ( 1,243 miles ) away .
The cogitation is unresolved access inPaleontology .
