An Even Scarier Predator Hunted Big ‘Terror Birds’ in South America

Someday between 16 and 11.6 million years in the past, a younger caiman came across a tasty snack in modern-day South America. The meal, nonetheless, turned out to be moderately bold, as a result of the croc hadn’t encounter simply any outdated prey.

It was a phorusrhacid, a big carnivore in its personal proper, aptly referred to as a “terror chook.” The now-extinct terror chook wouldn’t have given in with no combat—until, in fact, it was already lifeless, and the opportunistic croc merely scavenged its lifeless physique. That doesn’t appear to be the case, nonetheless. The assembly of the 2 apex predators performed out, and all that’s left of it at this time is a handful of puncture wounds on a fossilized bone courting again to the Middle Miocene Epoch. For paleontologists, it’s providing uncommon insights right into a prehistoric feeding interplay between two formidable however very totally different beasts.

“Proof of direct trophic [feeding] interactions between apex predators stays as a subject that has been traditionally understudied,” researchers wrote in a research reconstructing the encounter, printed Wednesday within the journal Biology Letters. “Prey is most frequently represented by herbivores and different animals that aren’t on the highest of the trophic net,” i.e. non-apex predators, in response to the research. This anecdotal account of an “aquatic apex predator feeding on a terrestrial apex predator” provides to our understanding of how advanced meals webs might be in each fashionable and historical vertebrate ecosystems,” the scientists wrote.

To analyze the prehistoric showdown, the researchers scanned the beforehand identified terror chook fossil to create a digital mannequin of the puncture wounds. They then turned the tooth marks into negatives to match them to the tooth of crocodyliforms (a gaggle of predatory reptiles together with crocodiles, alligators, and caimans) from La Venta, the fossil hotspot in Colombia the place the specimen originates.

“Comparisons with specimens of [modern] black caiman, Melanosuchus niger, recommend that the traces have been probably inflicted by a big caimanine, between 4.6 and 4.8 m [15.1 to 17.7 feet] lengthy,” defined the researchers, together with College of the Andes’ biologist Andres Hyperlink. “Within the present fossil assemblage of La Venta, one of the best match for a big caiman on this measurement vary can be a juvenile or subadult specimen of the large caimanine P. neivensis, the biggest crocodyliform within the La Venta Fauna.”

As a result of the chew marks on the fear chook bone don’t present indicators of therapeutic, the chook probably didn’t survive the Purussaurus neivensis’ assault, or was already lifeless.

The research finally sheds gentle on an interplay between “a few of the most emblematic apex predators within the Miocene of South America,” suggesting that enormous phorusrhacids might have had extra to fret about than researchers beforehand thought.