12 January 2025
As we speak we stay among the many descendants of the Terror Birds. Who have been they? And who’re they now?
Terror Birds (Phorusrhacids) have been a genus of enormous, flightless, carnivorous birds that thrived in South America from 43 million to 100,000 years in the past. Wikipedia describes them as “among the many largest apex predators in South America through the Cenozoic period.”
As you possibly can see from this diagram the most important of them may simply have eaten a human and, as a result of Homo sapiens advanced round 300,000 years in the past, we have been on Earth earlier than they went extinct. We’d have been in peril however we have been in Africa, separated by an ocean from these terrifying ancestors of contemporary birds.
DNA research in 2024 refined the phylogenetic supertree of birds inserting Terror Birds as ancestors within the clade Australaves, the group that advanced in South America and Australia. Click on on the picture under to see a bigger model of the diagram.
As a result of the diagram has tons of of tiny particulars I’ve hand-drawn the Terror Hen part beginning with their nearest dwelling relative, the seriema. Discover who else is descended from the Terror Birds!
Let’s take a photographic journey by way of the tree.
First come the seriemas, who stand alone with out different family members. These South American birds have a way of life is much like the secretarybird of Africa although they don’t seem to be associated. Right here a red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) kills a snake.
Then come falcons. Curiously, all the things else is descended from them together with …
… parrots …
… New Zealand wrens, who stand alone with out different family members …
… flycatchers …
… and all the opposite songbirds.
“Terror Birds” we all know at the moment are far much less terrifying. 🙂
