Fossil reveals power of terror bird's beak

摘要

With a swift chop of its beak, the terror bird could have whomped its prey, a new fossil find confirms. Terror birds were one of South America's top predators from about 50 million to 1.8 million years ago. Researchers have discovered a nearly compete skeleton of a new species of terror bird in a cliff face close to Chapadmalal, Argentina. The researchers call the bird Llallawavis scagliai -Scaglia's magnificent bird - for naturalist Galileo Juan Scaglia, the grandfather of one of the researchers. They describe the fossil in the March Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The skeleton includes a tiny bone that strengthened the link between the bird's beak and skull. It's the first time scientists have found this bone in a terror bird fossil, providing direct evidence that the beak would have been sturdy enough to be used as a hatchet while hunting. L. scagliai, roughly 1.2 meters tall and weighing about 18 kilograms, roamed South America around 3.5 million years ago. Its existence shows that more than one terror bird species bullied smaller creatures at the time. The finding also suggests that mammals moving in from North America around 5 million years ago didn't force terror birds to go extinct. What caused them to die off is still an open question.