Terror birds hunt South America
Flightless predatory birds up to three metres tall become apex carnivores on an isolated continent.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 11 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
With no placental carnivores present, the top predator roles in South America go to marsupial sparassodonts and to the phorusrhacids — flightless birds with massive hooked beaks, powerful legs and reduced wings. Biomechanical work suggests they killed by striking downward with the beak like a pickaxe rather than by grappling. They hold those roles for tens of millions of years and decline only when North American carnivores arrive across the Panama land bridge.