Impression of the artist in an encounter between an ancient Carnong and a bird of terrorism
Julian Bayona Berecra
About 13 million years ago in a wide South American Wetland, destroying predators hit. The bone fossilized from a more powerful bird not found in Colombia shows tooth marks made by a giant canan.
Link to andrés At the University of the Andes in Colombia and his colleagues study the crocodile fossils in a museum collection when they know that one of the bones is inappropriate. It turns into a member of a phorusrhacicid bird – a group known as “Birds of fear“
But this predator turns into a heavy end. The bone, originally discovered in Tatacoa region of Tatacoa’s brand at local palaeontologist césar perdomo, set for four deep divisions: tooth marks.
The link and his team wanted to know what the animal was scared of jaws like a scary predatorator. So they scan the fossil face to create a digital model of teeth marks and compared them to the teeth of ancient predators from the region. The perpetrator is likely not a mammal.
“There is no evidence of clipping and marked circles and (a) lines, similar to the accomplishments of crocodiles and caimans,” as the link.
Bird terrorism lived at a time when northern South America was ordered by System in Pebasa large network of wetlands that link tropical forests and pastures. The flooded ecosystem hosts a large variation of crocodiles, and the team finds a match for one’s teeth: a giant caiman called Purussaurus niifensis. The link estimates reptile about 4.5 meters long.
“Terrorism birds are undoubtedly at the end of the food chain,” as the link. “But this evidence shows that they can also fall as the victim of large caimans when they come to many bodies of water. They may have come to seek for the victim or (s) in this complex ecosystem.”
The team asked that they could not chew the possibility that the bird was dead when Caiman found it, and the teeth marks were the evidence of scavenging. There are no signs of healing the bone around the teeth marks. So whatever, the bird doesn’t live in the encounter.
“These kinds of (teeth) traces are more common than people think,” as Carolina Acosta is hospitable At the National University of La Plata in Argentina.
In a study published last year, he and a partner portraits are characterized On a smaller and older part of the fossil bird – almost 43 million years old – from Argentina. Scores suggest an ancient carnivial marsupial fed with that bird. Because traces also on the lower leg, Hospitaleche is amazing if the body of terrorism bird is a weak place for predatorors to chomp and hold their prey.
“(Bite marks) gave us this amazing little snapshots in life before,” as Stephanie Drumheller at the University of Tennessee.
If studying the ancient environments, there is a tendency to try to accurately classify the lost organisms within specific ecological roles, he said. However food web can be complicated.
“It was an animal that lived in the water and did things in the water, it was an animal that followed the ground and did not meet both,” as the drumheller. “But of course, nature is always better than, small, smooth boxes.”
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