Terror Bird Meets it's Doom

A correspondent sent me THIS LINK (I had seen it too!), concerning a dramatic event which happened 13 million years ago in the Middle Miocene.

This was in, what is now, Colombia. The locality is a desert (the Tatacoa Desert), then it was a swamp. A local collector had found the fossil and exhibited it in his own museum. Researchers from a Colombian university were cataloging the collection and discovered two things. The first was that the fossil was a leg bone from the top, land based, predator of the time Phorusrhacinae sp, better known as the Terror Bird. Fossils of this bird are rare, but what was even more exciting was the presence of tooth marks on the bone.

The tooth marks are similar to the teeth of crocodile-like creatures whose fossils can be found in museum collections. The most likely candidate is Purussaurus neivensis which was among the top, water based, predators of the time.

The tooth marks show no sign of healing and suggest that the Terror Bird did not survive, or that it was dead already and the croc scavenged it. (In scientific language being eaten is a trophic event!)

The story gives a fascinating glimpse of life in the past.