When Giant Terror Birds Were Apex Predators

after the dinosaurs had gone extinct mammals replace the large carnivore niche almost all over the world but some of these new giant predators were the direct descendants of the dinosaurs the birds these birds would have survived the mass extinction as flying creatures that in the absence of large land carnivores became flightless once again and started to capitalize on the same tricks as theropod dinosaurs running on two legs and using a large mouth as a weapon and they were known as the forest rockets birds all descended from a flying ancestor that most likely evolved in the Jurassic but have returned to flightlessness on many different evolutionary pathways and the forest rockets are just one family that has done this most of the large flightless birds today are from a group known as the Paleo nuts that include emus ostriches and cassowaries despite what you might think this is not where forest rockets came from they are actually from a group of birds known as neo waves they contain most flying birds but a few flightless members as well this would include penguins for one but also the kereama forms which is the group that contains forest rockets medium-sized flightless birds known as Surrey Emma are now the only living member of this one Stover sand populist group over the Americas the Surrey Emma is the closest living relative of the tourist rockets and it seems their closest flying relatives were birds like parrots and Falcons forest rockets with dominant predators in South America from the start who reach their large sizes in the Oligocene with birds like physalis these large Terra Birds were all carnivorous and this is given away by their beaks they have a strong downward curve similar to birds of prey today but for a long time it was thought that the large forest rockets were not capable of hunting large herbivorous animals and despite their menacing appearance they were actually nimble predators of small prey however this was almost certainly not the case made me because forest rockets were probably not very nimble a terror bird known as an del Colonus while being a fast runner was poor at making tight turns despite being on the more elegant side of the forest rocket spectrum these restrictions would have been a very big hindrance for catching small agile prey further evidence can be seen in different stress levels caused in their beak from certain motions their beak was very resistant to strong downward thrusts motions where they would stab a creature with their beak point and then pull back but shaking their prey side to side would cause high amounts of stress and perhaps injury this is a trend you would expect to see if they were adapted to eating prey around the same size as them because they would be unable to grab and kill small prey by shaking it side to side but they would be able to use their big point to pierce through any vulnerable parts of a large animal they may have had trouble pinning down struggling prey with their beak having this type of stress weakness but they had strong legs and they could have been used instead forest Rockets did have relatively weak bite forces but it is unlikely this would have hindered them in hunting as there are many predatory animals that have known to have hunted large prey and have actually evolved towards lower bite forces most notably saber-toothed cats that actually have a weaker bike force than most living felines for hunted larger prey having a week of bite force allow them to have a wider gape and was able to encompass their saber teeth since the large spike at the end of the Tara bird's beak would have been functionally similar to saber teeth they could have converged on the same design they were the apex predators of South America and were most likely rapacious hunters of the medium-sized herbivores they shared their habitat with known as notto ungulates these were unique South American hoofed animals that were very diverse once and died out as little as 10,000 years ago South America is where the forest rocket family first evolved and is best known from that there are scattered bird remains found throughout the world in Europe Africa and even Antarctica that are often classed as forest rockets for the first half of the Cenozoic South America was connected to Africa and Antarctica as part of a large southern supercontinent called Gondwana and because of this it would have been possible for early forest rockets to travel freely between continents however specimens found outside South America are nearly always controversial the most widely accepted forest rocket found outside of the Americas was called la vaca tavis known from a fossilized femur discovered in Algeria in North Africa interestingly this bird lived 48 million years ago in the Eocene where the southern continents had already started to separate and South America and Africa were separated by at least six hundred miles of ocean it is possible that lovicott avarice being a primitive forest rocket may have been able to fly just very poorly and this may have been enough to get them across the stretch of ocean another and sounder theory is that they swam island hopping their way across this is very plausible as many large flightless birds like ostriches are actually good swimmers despite the way they look many creatures like rodents and new world monkeys made their way into South America from Africa around this time as well so there may have been an island chain linking the continents and forest records may have made the same journey only in Reverse from about thirty-five million years ago onwards South America was in complete isolation drifting further away from Africa this isolation is what defined the South American ecosystem the animals found here was so different from anywhere else about halfway through the Cenozoic animals everywhere else was started to become more uniform but South America kept its unique animals whereas elephants were becoming the dominant large animal everywhere else South America still had giant sloths whereas ruminant animals like deers and antelopes were becoming dominant everywhere else South America had its own group of hoofed animals known as not a one gillis and whereas 30 million years ago felines and canines started to take over from the korea dance and hoofed predators south america kept its large carnivores the large flightless terror birds leaving the continent as the last place in the world that had bird apex predators during the Maya scene after the breakup of the old continents is also when some of the terrible's reached their largest sizes some of them like kelan ken reached dinosaur sizes its skull was the largest of any bird ever being around the same length as a small saltwater crocodile and has up a height estimates of 3 meters and even still it was not the largest forest rocket as it probably didn't weigh much more than 200 kilos another forest rocket called Bron tallness on the other hand was only a little shorter than Kevin Ken but much heavier weighing up to 350 kilos about the same as a large grizzly bear making it one of the largest birds that has ever existed Kevin ken was a member of a subfamily of forest rockets known as forest rockin a they were very tall but also very thin in slender and brawn tallness was a member of a subfamily known as pronghorn iffen a that was filled with birds that were usually a bit shorter they're very bulky in muscular but forest rockets were one of the main predators in South America for a long period of time and so one all Giants and evolved into many different shapes and sizes to tackle all different prey that lived here there was one group known as Sulabh Turris there were little carnivores probably filling a similar niche to a coyote a small predator that occasionally is fed upon by larger predators the smallest species was around the same size as the modern-day sorry Emma Sara a mother eats small prey like lizards and snakes that they killed by throwing them at the ground and due to similarities in their cause it is possible that Sulabh teres lived in a similar way and despite their small size they were one of the most successful forest rockets surviving for about 25 million years all forest rockets were carnivores but were quite verse knock you pied many different predatory niches Mezen Briones for instance were medium-sized forest rockets standing about the same height as a small person and I thought to have played a similar ecological role to a cheetah they lived about 5 million years ago in a part of Argentina that was covered in vast grasslands and most likely hunted the smaller and faster herbivores that would have adapted to life out on the plains they would have been very fast runners with some studies estimating their top speed at 60 miles per hour but this result is questionable as it was based on the strength of their bones and they could have evolved to be strong for other reasons like attacking prey interestingly the terror birds were not the only carnivores on the continent as there were a diverse group of marsupial predators that existed all around South America throughout the Cenozoic as well known as the spoor acetones some of these creatures like finally coos - were about the size of a small Jaguar and lived in the same habitat at the same time as the Terra birds like Mezen Briones it is possible and backed up by some analysis of their habitats that the spa residents avoided very open plains to stay clear of the competition with the predatory Birds five million years ago one genus of forest rock had made it to North America and must have been quite successful there as many specimens have been uncovered North America and South America would not have had a land bridge at this point so the bird must have Island hopped through the Caribbean but Titanic traveling into North America was the beginning of a much larger exchange of animals between the continents 2 to 3 million years ago the nearly 30 million years of isolation that South America had undergone came to an end with the formation of Central America connecting the continents in North America this exchange of animals for many of them going extinct and it was mainly the South American species that were competed by northern ones it was initially thought that this is how the forest raucous went extinct that the large mammalian carnivores from the north fight Smilodon and other felines were more successful predators and out competed them however this is actually an unpopular theory now the forest rockets disappeared around the same time the content is joined up but large carnivores like smiler moth didn't crossover until much later than most animals it is likely the Smilodon and other large predators that became well known in South America merely exploited their disappearance and actively replaced them having to this Titanus seem to be quite successful in north america and would have lived alongside these large carnivals there were even a group of large flightless and carnivorous birds that lived in north america who were close relatives of the forest rockets called baffle method a that went extinct about 20 million years ago some of the largest birth on earth its approach the size of forest rockets standing about two meters tall and yet they coexisted with mammalian carnivores in North America for 15 million years this clearly shows that the niche of large flightless predatory bird was able to coexist with mammalian carnivores and makes the extinction of the forest rocket a bit of a mystery the forest rocket family may have pushed on until as little as 18,000 years ago in Uruguay but Titanus was the last of the large forest rockets and the last bird to occupy the same ecological role as a large carnivore so although dinosaurs may have died out 65 million years ago the theropod dinosaur niche was being filled up until only a few million years ago thank you for watching if you would like to be notified of future uploads consider subscribing many thanks to my patrons for supporting me especially Fazal Worth and Green Falls if you would like to support me as well then you can go to patreon and make a pledge

Channel: Moth Light Media

Views: 123,767

Rating: 4.9574032 out of 5

Keywords: Terror Birds, Giant bird Predators, Bird Apex Predators, Giant birds, Phorusrhacids, Kelenken, Largest Bird In the World, Brontornis, Sparrasodont, thylocasmilus, Evolution of the terror birds, Paleontology, cenozoic, after the dinosaurs extinction, eocene, predatory birds, birds of prey, seriema

Id: LV_BV3KcOu8

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/hoarfen]

Does this guy have a YouTube channel or something. Really nice video.

[u/interiorities]

I can't get past him saying "they were known as the forest rockets". By whom??

[u/stewartm0205]

They were just predatory dinosaurs like their ancestors.

[u/Ramast]

I wanted to know what caused their extinction but the video only addressed what probably didn't cause their extinction leaving the question open