1. purepedantry
  2. Terror Bird couldn't fly but probably could swim

Terror Bird couldn't fly but probably could swim

By purepedantry on January 23, 2007.

The terror bird or Titanis walleri was a flightless, carnivorous bird present in North America. Researchers at the University of Florida have determined that it was probably present in North America prior to the formation of the land bridge that connected Alaska with Asia North America and South America:

i-d83828bb70bac26231eda972babd79a2-terror.jpg

A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless "terror bird," arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents.

UF paleontologist Bruce MacFadden said his team used an established geochemical technique that analyzes rare earth elements in a new application to revise the ages of terror bird fossils in Texas and Florida, the only places in North America where the species has been found. Rare earth elements are a group of naturally occurring metallic elements that share similar chemical and physical properties.

"It was previously thought that Titanis immigrated to Texas across the Panamanian land bridge that formed about 3 million years ago connecting North and South America," said MacFadden, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at UF. "But the rare earth element analysis of a fossil Titanis bone from Texas determines its age to be 5 million years old. This shows that the bird arrived 2 million years before the land bridge formed, probably across islands that formed what today is the Isthmus of Panama."

The study will be published Jan. 23 in the online version of the journal Geology and featured in its February print edition.

The terror bird was carnivorous, weighed about 330 pounds, had powerful feet and a head larger than a man's. It is known in the fossil record from a single toe bone in Texas, and in Florida by about 40 bone fragments from different skeletal regions. MacFadden's team also analyzed six specimens from the Santa Fe River in north Central Florida.

How did it get there then? Did it swim? Walk on the backs of sea turtles? Giant man-eating birds do not appear by spontaneous generation.

Hat-tip: Eurekalert.

Tags
Aminals

More like this

Terror Bird Arrived in North American Before Land Bridge Formed
Titanis Walleri, Terror bird. artist's rendering. Image: University of Florida. University of Florida paleontologist Bruce MacFadden said his team has determined that a prehistoric 7 foot tall flightless "terror bird," Titanis walleri, arrived in North America from South America long before a…
My picks from ScienceDaily
'Terror Bird' Arrived In North America Before Land Bridge, Study Finds: A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless "terror bird," arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents. UF…
Raven, the claw-handed bird, last of the phorusrhacids
As if the revelations about Brontornis and all that new work on the ameghinornithids weren't enough, 2007 also saw the publication of a long-awaited new study on the age of Titanis walleri, North America's only phorusrhacid, and - supposedly - a species that survived until as recently as 15,000…
Birds in the News 68 (v2n19)
Wood Duck drake, Aix sponsa. Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Arthur Morris, Birds as Art. Birds in Science The ancestors of modern birds are thought to have been small, feathered, dinosaurs, the theropods. One of these small feathered dinosaurs is Microraptor gui…

Wrong land bridge. The article refers to the Isthmus of Panama forming, not Beringia (although at the date they're talking about, Beringia was probably below sea level, so you're sort of right).