Stay approximately 10 feet high, weighing about 220 pounds and with an ax -shaped beak capable of providing devastating strikes, The terrorist bird would have proven a great enemy for most creatures.
But about 13 million years ago, one of them perhaps fell prey to an even larger creature, a team of paleontologists in Colombia discovered after examining the bite marks in a fossilized bone of one of the formidable birds.
Publish their results in the scientific journal evaluated by peers “Letters of biology”, “ The team hypothesized that it had been killed and eaten or consumed by recovering from a medium Caiman, a crocodile -type reptile.
“This is a fascinating story of the interaction of two very emblematic animals in the past,” said Andrés Link, the main author of the study, at NBC News in an email on Wednesday. “We have in fact found not only the first record of a terrorist bird in northern South America, but the dental marks of a large Caiman who probably nourished,” he added.
The rare terrorist bird fossils were mainly identified in the southern part of the continent.
Although dental brands are “not rare” in the fossil file, it is “exciting” to find evidence that indicates an APEX predator chased or recovered by another, said Link, an associate professor of biological sciences at Los Andes University in Colombia.
Writing in “biology letters”, the team said that teeth marks showed no sign of healing, which suggests that the attack was fatal.
Based on the observation, they added that terrorist birds could have faced a higher risk of being killed and ate than expected.
To identify the attacker, Link and his team scanned the fossil and analyzed the size, shape and spacing of dental brands. After comparing these brands to the teeth of the region’s crocodyliforms, they concluded that the manufacturer’s trace was probably a juvenile caiman about 15 feet long.
It remains “very difficult” to know if the Caiman ate the terrorist bird after killing it or if it has recovered the carcass, said Link. If the bird was alive, it was probably attacked by drinking in a river, wrote researchers, and conversely, if it were dead, the Caiman found and nourished on his body near the water.
“This story will not be completely told because we have no other evidence to choose between these two hypotheses.” Link said.
The discovery questions the hypothesis of “a linear relationship between predators feeding on the food of herbivores in plants,” he added. “The web food is really much more complex.”
The lower part of the left leg of the bird used in the study was determined in the famous fossil beds of the Venta of Colombia two decades ago by Cesar Perdomo, a local paleontologist.
