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Nearly 12 million years ago , the largest " terror bird " ever discovered was attacked and killed by a monumental caiman , a 3D depth psychology of its fossilized ramification indicate .
Researchers key out the fogy , which was found at the La Venta organization in the Tatacoa Desert of Colombia , in a study put out Monday ( Nov. 4 ) in the journalPapers in Palaeontology .
A stock image of a terror bird. The fossil of another species of terror bird has been found in Colombia, confirming that the apex predator also lived in tropical environments.
The fossil is the first know specimen from a Phorusrhacid , a fellowship of large , predatory flightless birds colloquially known as " panic birds , " recover in Colombia . The size of the bone , a part of the stage tantamount to a shin bone in humans , suggests that the bird may have been between 5 % and 20 % bad than other scourge bird specimens antecedently found , possibly weighing around 340 pounds ( 156 kilo ) and put up over 9 feet ( 2.7 meters ) grandiloquent .
Even with its big stature , the meat - eating razz was likely prey upon by an even more gargantuan creature — a caiman from the genusPurussaurus , a crocodilian reptile thought to be over 30 feet ( 9 metre ) long . To pick together the final moments of the animal , the researchers used a portable scanner , which revealed the deep puncture combat injury the cayman left behind .
" We surmise that the threat Bronx cheer would have perish as a solution of its injury generate the size of crocodilian 12 million years ago , " field of study co - authorSiobhán Cooke , an associate prof of working bod and phylogenesis at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine , articulate in astatement .
3D scans of the fossilized leg bone revealed puncture wounds from the teeth of an ancient caiman.
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Wielding a massive head with a tart , ax - comparable bill , terror bird may have hunted smaller animals bydriving the peak of their pecker into their preywith potent neck muscles .
The find also provides a newfangled understanding of the integral environmental science of the La Venta area during theMiocene epoch(23 million to 5 million days ago ) .
Most other terror bird fossil have been found in Patagonia , a more temperate surround at the time . But this affright chick , found in Colombia , would have been an solar apex vulture in a tropic environs . The landscape of La Venta was lush with " meander rivers , " the statement noted , and would have been rich with diverse specie . The chick would have share the ground with primates , hoof mammal , giant ground sloths and ancient relatives of armadillo known as glyptodonts .
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" During this clock time we find the ontogeny of tumid forms ( much larger than those live today ) in certain group of animals — crocodile , snakes , some bird groups — in La Venta and elsewhere in South America,“Luis Chiappe , the senior ice president of inquiry and accumulation for the National History Museum of Los Angeles County who was not involve with the study , evidence Live Science in an e-mail .
The fossil was initially found intimately 20 years ago , but was n’t initially pegged as belong to a terror bird . modernistic scanning and diagnostic engineering allow for the fossil to be re - canvas and identified . " It ’s possible there are fossils in existing collection that have n’t been realize yet as terror doll because the bone are less symptomatic than the humiliated branch bone we find , " Cooke aver .
