World Bird Wednesday LXXXI

Terror Birds!

    My late night reading in the early months of retirement has taken me far adrift. Having lost my moorings to the regular hours and work schedule that keeps much of the world thinking about practical matters I surf at the mercy of whimsy and chance encounters. Oh, the shocking things one stumbles across.
    I think it is human nature to trust other people, to take for granted they are what they say, that they don't have a dark past or some hidden skeleton hanging high in the family tree. Perhaps I am being a bit naive in this same way when it comes to the gentle creatures I spend so much photographing.
     Of course birds are wild animals and we should make no bones that their everyday actions consist of certain bloodthirsty behaviours that would bring you or I a life sentence in prison. Anything resembling civilised conduct in the animal kingdom is probably a hallucination brought on by our own misspent sentiments. I am weak that way. Still, imagine my shock when I discovered the evidence of a axe murderer in the fossil record!

 But let me regress about about two million years...

up to that point the landmass of South America was an island continent. The isthmus of Central America was soon to be formed by volcanic irruptions that would make a way for the vastly divergent creatures of N. and S. America to mingle. Unlike the North, where giant mammals and cats ruled the day, in the Southerly Continent avian life reigned supreme, the apex predator, Phorusrhacids, was a ten foot tall flightless bird weighing in at three hundred pounds with a massive hatchet like head used to bludgeon its prey.Terror birds indeed!
    Picture credit Ohio University.

    Terror birds dominated South America for an estimated sixty million years in various forms.  Recent fossil discoveries in Texas and Florida indicate the the arrival of TB's in North America may have even pre-dated the so called Great American Interchange of species when the continents where permanently connected by the land bridge. The mysteries abound. Imagine the Saber tooth tiger facing off against Phorusrhacids, that fight surely happened.
    It was once thought these predators became extinct about the time man arrived in the new world about ten thousand years ago, that possibly our spear technology spelt an end to them like it did so many of the Mega beasts of North America. Not guilty! Floridian fossils had become mixed with those of more recent epochs in tidal waters causing some theoretical misconceptions. Trace elements indicated these misplaced fossils where about two million years old, not ten thousand! However; no one believes we have made a discernible dent in the true history of these astonishing birds.
    What ended it all? Well, maybe it's not over yet.  The Seriemas birds of South America are thought to be the closest living relative of the ancient Terror Birds and exhibit the same grizzly technique when hunting larger prey, beating it into submission. Could the Terror Bird reemerge if fate deals our planet's current apex predator (us) a fatal blow?
    I must stop drinking coffee so late in the evening!

Click here for Bonus Terror Bird Video from NG!

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