World Report: November 10, 2006 Vol. #12 Iss. #10
- This Issue:
- Table of Contents
- Cover Story
- Cover Story - Spanish Version
- Mini-Lesson
- Comprehension Quiz
- Teacher's Guide and Worksheets
Scientists Find a Big Bad Bird
Millions of years ago, a giant meat-eating bird roamed an area in what is today Argentina. On October 26, scientists announced that they had identified the skull and foot bones of that bird. It is the largest bird ever discovered. The 15-million-year-old fossil was unearthed by a high school student in 2004, in the Patagonia region of Argentina.
"The animal was bigger than an ostrich and had a head as big as a horse's," Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute in Los Angeles, California, told TFK. Chiappe has studied the fossil.
The flightless bird, which was about 10 feet tall and weighed about 400 pounds, belonged to the phorusrhacid (for-rus-rah-kid), or "terror bird," family. It had a beak much like an eagle's and ate mostly small animals.
Paleontologists once believed that large terror birds were heavy and slow, but this discovery shows the opposite. These big birds were fleet-footed creatures. "[They were] gigantic and yet their feet and legs were slender, showing that they were fast runners," says Chiappe. He believes that the big bird lived in open forest areas in South America between 60 million and 2 million years ago.
