( Spanish) – The discovery of a fossil from 13 million years ago in Colombia, thanks to the joint work of an amateur collector and a group of scientists, shows that in this territory some of the most terrifying animals on the continent existed: the terror birds. The discovery is the first of its kind in the tropics of the Americas and would be key to understanding the paleofauna of the Middle Miocene geological period.
It is a fossil that the empirical paleontologist César Perdomo discovered in La Venta, in the Tatacoa Desert, in the department of Huila. The piece, which he kept in his “La Tormenta” museum and is part of a collection of more than 5,000 fossils, went unnoticed for more than a decade until recently, when it caught the attention of a group of scientists who identified that it corresponded to a “bird of terror.”
The research, led by the Argentine scientist Federico Degrange and published in the specialized magazine Papers in Paleontology, concludes that it is the first record of a phorusrhacid bird for the country and that it could be one of the largest specimens that has ever existed.
The MT-0200 fossil, as identified by scientists, corresponds to a fragment of the tibiotarsus – a bone found in the legs of birds – and its size indicates that it would be an animal eight feet tall. These “predation machines,” as described by Andrés Link, a Colombian biologist and one of the co-authors of the research, were carnivorous animals that developed unique adaptations to hunt their prey. They were giant, thin birds specialized in running fast, and that had a skull so strong that it allowed them to use their beak as a guillotine.
The phorusrhacids, which took the place of super predators after the extinction of the dinosaurs, were discovered for the first time in the southern cone: most specimens have been found in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Additionally, there are later records in Texas and Florida; which suggests that their origin is in South America and, later, they invaded North America. However, until now there were no records in the Tropics that would allow this hypothesis to be verified.
“At some point it was believed that it was not the ideal ecosystem, that the forests were very dense for a bird that runs so fast and that it could be better adapted to open ecosystems (…) The “La Venta” site may have had a little of everything: forests, savannahs, wetlands,” says Andrés Link in an interview with en Español.
However, the Colombian scientist assures that “this finding closes the question of whether these animals were in tropical areas” and shows that the phorusrhacids They inhabited a large part of the continent, except that most of the records are in the south because there are more fossil deposits and greater paleontological research.
Likewise, this discovery contributes to a better understanding of the paleofauna that lived in the Middle Miocene in “La Venta” and could provide clues about the interaction between different carnivorous vertebrates.
Until now, it was believed that the largest aquatic predators were crocodiles or alligators, and that sparassodonts, carnivorous marsupials similar to the Tasmanian tiger, occupied that place on land. However, the question was who could prey on them. “When the terror birds appear, it makes us think that there is a group of top predators, which were probably the top of the trophic pyramid,” says Link.
The town of La Venta, located in southwestern Colombia, was recently selected as one of the new 100 Geological Heritage sites by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), for its richness and paleontological diversity.
During more than a century of research, unique fossils of fish, reptiles, mammals and birds from the Middle Miocene geological period have been found; which has consolidated this fossil deposit as one of the most important on the continent.
These vestiges have contributed to the reconstruction of the evolutionary histories of different groups and, according to the Colombian Geological Service, “they could also offer key clues to confront one of humanity’s greatest global concerns: climate change.”
The preservation and dissemination of La Venta has been possible thanks to the joint work between the scientific community and the local community. This dialogue between academia and citizen science has given rise to the Tatacoa National History Museum and has strengthened the processes of the La Tormenta Museum and the Villavieja Paleontological Museum.
These three initiatives, in addition to promoting scientific research, seek to encourage the next generations to be guardians of the historical, natural and paleontological heritage of the region.
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