A new discovery of a “terrible bird” reveals the terrifying size of the prehistoric beast

A 12-million-year-old fossil of a “terrible bird” found in South America may represent the largest known member of its species to date, a study has reported.

The lower leg bone of the “huge” bird was found by a museum curator in Colombia’s fossil-rich Tatacoa desert 20 years ago, but it was not recognized as a threatened bird until 2023.

This year, researchers created a three-dimensional model of the model using a portable scanner, which enables them to analyze the fossils further for study.

“We are talking about a species that was larger than 2.5 meters [8.2 feet] and its weight is more than 150 kilograms [330 pounds]”the author of the study Federico Javier Degrange and the Center for Research in Earth Sciences Argentina said Newsweek.

The phorusrhacids—commonly known as “horror birds”—belong to an extinct family of medium- to large-sized carnivores that were the top predators during much of the Cenozoic Era. about 66 million years ago until today.

These birds, found mainly in the southern part of South America, had a slender body and special locomotor techniques for running, and the largest flightless species .

Their “giant” mouths and the adaptations of their skulls suggest that they were efficient predators.

“The scarecrows lived on the ground, had legs and arms suitable for running, and most of them ate other animals,” study author Siobhán Cooke, assistant professor of anatomy and education of evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he said in a press release.

In a recent paper, published in a newspaper Papers in PalaeontologyThe authors presented the fossils as the first record of a large predatory bird from the Middle Miocene (about 16 million to 11.6 million years ago) fossils of long ago in central Colombia.

Although the specimen contains only a fragment of a lower leg bone known as the left tibiotarsus, its size has led researchers to suggest that it may belong to one of the fearsome birds. that ever existed, probably weighing 340 kilograms – although this is a very rough estimate considering the fragments of fossils. The fossil is also thought to be the northernmost evidence of such birds found in South America so far.

Researchers estimate that this animal was 5 to 20 percent larger than other known fearsome birds, which are thought to have been 3 to 9 meters long, depending fossils found.

The specimens may well represent a new species within the phorusrhacid group. But limited information has prevented researchers from unequivocally assigning fossils to a new genus or species.

“Although it is possible that it is a new species, we are not sure,” said Degrange Newsweek.

Interestingly, the fossils also show evidence of tooth marks that are thought to have belonged to an extinct species of caiman, or crocodilian—purussaurus—which is thought to have it was 30 meters long.

“We suspect that the predatory bird would have died from its injuries given the size of crocodiles 12 million years ago,” Cooke said.

Reference

Degrange, FJ, Cooke, SB, Ortiz-Pabon, LG, Pelegrin, JS, Perdomo, CA, Salas-Gismondi, R, Link, A. (2024). A new giant bird (Cariamiformes, Phorusrhacidae) from the tropical Middle Miocene of La Venta in northern South America. Papers in Palaeontology. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/spp2.1601