I had an Earth-Science professor back in college who went on a mini-tangent about Terror Birds during a class on Mass Extinctions. To sum it all up, he stated "you do not know fear until you have bird as tall as you, looking you in the eye, face to face. Now imagine a bird that is taller than you, with a hatchet for a beak, staring you down."
@Commie Hammer humans are OP. There is nothing we couldn't figure out how to kill given enough time and motivation. Jurassic World Dominion, which involves dinosaurs escaping into the wild and encroaching on human civilization, would realistically end with the dinosaurs going extinct again.
@@dplocksmith91 Depends, the original Jurrasic park books had procompsagnathus go feral and global which felt realistic but I get that you mean larger and slower breeding animals.
Man, terror birds are very fascinating to me because it shows a time when avian theropod dinosaurs got back on their feet as apex predators for a few million years.
I've always loved how phorusrachids where big, flightless theropods who just didn't get the memo that the Mesozoic ended. Something I wonder about is the visible fingers thing. You see some terror bird depictions with visible clawed fingers and I remember as a kid you'd see some with straight up hands, though I'm pretty sure evidence for that was dubious even in the 90s.
@@davidsheckler8417 How about you get back to me when you don't need to desperately seek validation by trying to be a troll like an angry middle school kid?
At one time I had a pair of ravens for pets, and would sit and watch them and would think about terror birds, and a cold sweat would go down the back of my neck thinking just how terrifying a 10-foot-tall Terror Bird would be.
What an interesting group of predators. It’s crazy to think that for millions of years after the extinction to the dinosaurs their direct ancestors maintained control of an entire continent, and parts of another for a considerable amount time. On the topic of predatory birds, how about a video on extinct large raptors like the haast eagle, or the giant cuban owls/hawks?
3:03 Now there was a 2019 article that considers the Seriemas to be part of the bird of prey group. Does that make the Cariamiformes order birds of prey too?
As someone who has had interactions with Cassowaries before I shudder to think of a bird that size or larger that not only would be happy to kick you to death, but then eat you as well. Would have been incredible to see these guys in the flesh, but honestly Seriemas are really fascinating birds in their own right.
I would consider the Moas, Madagascarian Elephant Birds, Dromornis, Emus, Ostriches and Rheas, Cassowaries and the Haast's Eagle are still magnificent.
I wonder what would happen if North and South America never collided. Or if the seven continents never collided back together after Pangea split up, what would be different?
6:13/9:57 Due to its smaller size and different dietary preferences, would this bird have the greatest chance of interacting with humans if it survived until the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary?
The dating may be controversial, but it seems entirely plausible that Psilopterine mesopredators persisted until at least the end of the Pleistocene. The fossil record is so spotty and fragmentary. The find of a late Pleistocene Psilopterus referenced here is literally just part of one femur. South American paleontology still has so much to discover, I think. I wouldn't at all be surprised if future finds point to a much more recent survival of this lineage than we previously thought.
Only thing scary about big birds is the amount of time it would take to get one ready for Thanks Giving. Might have to start preheating the oven around Labor Day.
How would Phorusrachids contend with the teratorns? Argentavis & Taubatornis in South America. Aiolornis, Cathartornis & Teratornis for Titanis in North America.
Fun fact: the most accepted theory on their extinction is that raccoons and their family ate their eggs as they disappeared around the same time they showed and would also explain the lack of large american flightless birds
Actually, (though it's possible this may be the partially the case with procyon lotor and titanis) this could well not be the case as procyonids island hopped to South America 7.3 MYA and would've coexisted with some of the larger terror birds for several million years while titanis arrived in North America 5 MYA and became extinct 1.8 MYA meaning that it with the procyonids for over 3 million years and procyonids first appeared 22.6 MYA while bathornithids became extinct 20 MYA which would've allowed coexistence for 2.6 million years which would be too long for an animal to become extinct because of another animal. Not to mention that these cariamiform birds would've had to deal with other potential nest raiders (such as sparassodonts vs phorusracids and nimravids vs bathornithids) before meeting the procyonids meaning that procyonids wouldn't have been much of an issue for these birds. Currently, it's believed that terror birds went extinct was due to mainly climate change; it's possible newly appearing specific species of animals could've partially contributed to the extinction of a specific terror bird species as well but not the animals' clade as a whole. Also, if procyonids are the reason why there are no large American flightless birds, then how come rheas are still around.
It would have been the craziest thing to witness these types of intense animals running around doing their own thing, and we just had to learn to navigate around them.. I totally can see them taking on larger prey by thrashing their muscular neck and strong clawed feet. So even though thier bite force wasn't the highest, it would have easily been enough to strike fear and respect into any human who possible was near one.. it's like a milder version of a raptor type dinosaur. The world would be a scarier place if we had to encounter these guys when going out in the wilderness...
I think, the main weakness of any flightless bird is the protection of its eggs. The endurance and efficiency when hunting should have exceeded mammalian hunters. But medium-sized mammalian carnivores may have feasted on the eggs reducing the reproduction rate below 1.
Those placental mammals displays everything and have made the modern fauna so boring. Imagine if every different continent had its own megafauna, not necessarily tied to placental mammals, a better version of what Australia is today. It is the first time in the world’s history where just a single clade with artiodactyls, carnivores rodents and primates has taken over everything.
I’ve wondered if their reproductive methods contributed to their extinction. Smallish, nocturnal egg thieves and predators would have represented a challenge for a large egg-laying species, I reckon. How were their parenting skills?
When ratites are mentioned, as being capable swimmers, one might get the impression you're saying that ratites spread as flightless birds also. But the common ancestor of the extant (and recently extinct) ratites could fly -- with the loss of flight capability developing independently.
Sorry about the phrasing there. As concerns Phorusrachids, it would appear that they were already flightless before crossing the Atlantic, unlike the Ratites.
There's even a ratite to this day that can fly, the tinamous, though for some reason traditionally they weren't classed as ratites? Which confused me because when I saw them I knew immediately they were ratites by appearance, despite the fact they can fly. It never really dawned on me some people might assume all ratites are flightless. Anyway, it's pretty clear to scientists today that they are ratites. The science books just need to catch up.
@@catpoke9557 -Yes indeed. Their heads and beaks are quite ratite-looking. As are their stout legs and feet. They get around quite well on the ground, and if they retain a lot of similarities with the common ancestor, it's easy to imagine how flightlessness evolved multiple times, separately, in that lineage.
my friend had a parrot, never underestimate the power of a birds beak the parrot could crack a brazil nut like it was an m&m for us. i could see it easily cutting off a finger with little to know effort at all. terror birds are my favorite pre historic animal. it wouldnt surprise me if that 8 foot one could run up to a large animal and if it could get its head in the beak, crushing it while running next to it
Large parrots can actually crack bones, too. It's common for people to give their parrots chicken bones as a snack when they finish eating it. Granted the bone is cooked, but it's still insane how easily they crack large bones.
Wow! I always read that these birds lived in North America from the late pliocene to early pleistocene in North America. Now it has been confirmed that these animals lived in North America 5 million years ago!?! That is indeed something pretty new to me!
great artwork! very to the point upload, a joy to listen to. amazing birds back then, well, i must say, i love the ones we have now, imagine one of those harrasing u at your great outdoors day ..... ;D
I've always been in the North hemisphere USA to be exact, what the heck so the terror birds were in the USA 🤯😳 thank you a lot of channels say they weren't except Paleo world
Dr.Polaris, if they never met humans and we're isolated to the Southern hemisphere then why do I get a very chill when I see these creatures even there skeletons.😳🤯 I first seen these on the old series Paleo World on the Channel TLC
They are animals, not monsters and we have no proof they would have even hunted humans. Humans have always been a bigger threat to the natural world than it has ever been to humanity.
Actually, the youngest terror bird are from just 36,000 years ago! BUT they were psilopterus, which was one of the smallest, at under 2ft, so it wasn’t very impressive, and way LESS dangerous than other birds, by then
I only learned about the bathornithids very recently. It honestly feels like people ignore them to push the 'outcompeted by smilodon' idea, ignoring the fact that bathornithids coexisted with sabre-tooth cats for a good while. Its seem more likely to me that egg eating mammals were the real culprit for both their extinctions. That and climate change. Those and the sebechids, and honestly the Miocene in general are really slept on in Cenozoic palaeomedia.
They should bring these birds back if they can, I bet they are tasty, I wouldn't mind paying premium to eat some stuffed bird like that, or perhaps grilled.
You can't use Allosaurus, great white shark, and smilodon to argue that Terror Birds hunted large prey when those 3 have teeth while terror birds didn't.
I would love terror birds in Jurassic. Imagine we get a view of a raptor-like foot that leads us to think it’s a new dromaeosaur villain...only for a massive beak to come down and kill a character off, thereby introducing us to terror birds that have scared off or killed the local raptors.
I really hope that the next big paleo project after Prehistoric Planet will be about South Amarica during the first half of the Cenozoic era. I know you're taking a break from South Amarica, but I would like to see a video on the sparassodonts the other group of carnivores from the island continent as well as the many different types of herbivores like the notoungulates.
The presentation really clicked for me with the blue-checkered polo shirt on the human-for-scale. Great pictures, narration is smooth but rapid. Subscribed.
@ 12:02 the therror bird is shown here with two very distingtive claw on its time wings. Is there clear fossil record of the forelimbs or did they really had this feature which looks more like a feature of the extinct Enantiornithes. the only Aves having functioning clawed forelimbs are juvenile hoatzins. EDIT: an emu also has a clawed forelimb but lacks the muscles to use it ( source AronRA)
Cassowaries and Ostriches alsoe have clawed forelimbs; And few more birds if I remember well. Just we dont see claws because they are covered by feathers.
Very impressive, very terrifying, but also very satisfying, stuffed, scampi style, or fried. I'm not being glib, but one can't help but wonder. One chicken wing 🍗 could have fed a family.
I duno but Forest Rockets sounds way cooler then terror birds. Forest Rockets are from Free World while Terror Birds are from Middle East. They lived in forest and were fast. Forest Rockets just works better.
Oddly, they are not at all close relatives, being a good example of convergent evolution. Secretary birds are closer to hawks and eagles, while Phorusrachids and seriemas were close to falcons, parrots and songbirds.
One line in Walking with Beasts always bugged me from the start: "This is a world where birds eat horses." They were going for dramatic effect, I know, as the Gastornis was chasing the Propaleotherium. But birds still eat horses today; we just call them vultures.
Since you showed an image of them in the video will you do a video on the terrorbird's lesser known cousins the bathornithids? Or is there not enough on them for a dedicated video?
I would probably think they would’ve been both the extinction of the terror bird, the prehistoric, mammal, carnivores, climate change, and etc. of North America. Of course we’re talking about.
It’s actually been found now that’s some terror birds had sickle-claws similar to maniraptorans. Whether these were used in hunting though isn’t known.
I wonder if terror birds killed their prey like seriemas do. Either by kicking it to death, or by picking it up and slamming it onto the ground over and over again.
@@dr.polaris6423 Not to mention that, like in South America, it would also have to contend with various crocodilians and early mammalian predators (creodonts and early carnivorans).
I had an Earth-Science professor back in college who went on a mini-tangent about Terror Birds during a class on Mass Extinctions. To sum it all up, he stated "you do not know fear until you have bird as tall as you, looking you in the eye, face to face. Now imagine a bird that is taller than you, with a hatchet for a beak, staring you down."
Awesome.
@Commie Hammer humans are OP. There is nothing we couldn't figure out how to kill given enough time and motivation. Jurassic World Dominion, which involves dinosaurs escaping into the wild and encroaching on human civilization, would realistically end with the dinosaurs going extinct again.
@@dplocksmith91 Depends, the original Jurrasic park books had procompsagnathus go feral and global which felt realistic but I get that you mean larger and slower breeding animals.
my guy was a time traveller
@@Sara3346 I mean, in the first book they made it to central America, I don't know about global.
Man, terror birds are very fascinating to me because it shows a time when avian theropod dinosaurs got back on their feet as apex predators for a few million years.
More than a few. They were still around just a few million years ago.
@@tyranitararmaldo I know, I don't know how long exactly they lasted.
@@GamingIndominus they popped up not long after the dinosaurs died out. So roughly 50-40 million years.
@@tyranitararmaldo ah, I thought so. Just wanted to be sure, thank you.
AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA
I've always loved how phorusrachids where big, flightless theropods who just didn't get the memo that the Mesozoic ended. Something I wonder about is the visible fingers thing. You see some terror bird depictions with visible clawed fingers and I remember as a kid you'd see some with straight up hands, though I'm pretty sure evidence for that was dubious even in the 90s.
Yeah the exposed digits trope was disproven during the 90’s but continued in paleoart for a while longer.
You should be ashamed of yourself. A full grown adult loving cartoons
@@davidsheckler8417 How ignorant.
@@davidsheckler8417 How about you get back to me when you don't need to desperately seek validation by trying to be a troll like an angry middle school kid?
@@davidsheckler8417 wtf r u on about?
At one time I had a pair of ravens for pets, and would sit and watch them and would think about terror birds, and a cold sweat would go down the back of my neck thinking just how terrifying a
10-foot-tall Terror Bird would be.
You were like Odin. He also used to have two ravens by his side
What an interesting group of predators. It’s crazy to think that for millions of years after the extinction to the dinosaurs their direct ancestors maintained control of an entire continent, and parts of another for a considerable amount time. On the topic of predatory birds, how about a video on extinct large raptors like the haast eagle, or the giant cuban owls/hawks?
They didn't maintain control they had competition with big snakes, giant caimen, land Crocs, and Sparassodonts
There wasn’t a complete dinosaur extinction. These birds aren’t direct descendants of dinosaurs, the are full dinosaurs, just as humans are full apes.
I adore the terror birds. One of the coolest predators in history. I do like to jokingly call them "forest rockets".
I call them "prehistoric Big Birds".
Would you ride one *if* they were still around, *could* be tamed and domesticated?
@@whitewolf3051 yes but only if they are domesticated to love humans. i don't want to take any chances with that axe beak
@whitewolf3051 Real Life and Ark Survival evolved are two different things I'm afraid.
Meteor wipes out most dinosaurs, meanwhile...the Terror Birds: "I didn't hear no bell!"
3:03 Now there was a 2019 article that considers the Seriemas to be part of the bird of prey group.
Does that make the Cariamiformes order birds of prey too?
Yes it technically would make them birds of prey.
Between land crocs, terror birds and glyptodonts, South America must have looked ljke a time capsule from the dinosaur age.
As someone who has had interactions with Cassowaries before I shudder to think of a bird that size or larger that not only would be happy to kick you to death, but then eat you as well. Would have been incredible to see these guys in the flesh, but honestly Seriemas are really fascinating birds in their own right.
Though there's no guarantee they'd want to eat humans. They may kill us out of pure territorial rage the way cassowaries sometimes do, however.
Arguably the last of the truly great theropods
I would consider the Moas, Madagascarian Elephant Birds, Dromornis, Emus, Ostriches and Rheas, Cassowaries and the Haast's Eagle are still magnificent.
Sixth. Super cool birds. Dinos trying to come back!
Man the cenozoic was an awesome crapshoot of all different kinds of animals
I know right.
Ah yes the murder dodos
Love these guys.
PS: I’d do one on rhinos
I wonder what would happen if North and South America never collided. Or if the seven continents never collided back together after Pangea split up, what would be different?
South American predators were already on the way out by the time GABI happened, so on that front nothing would change.
6:13/9:57 Due to its smaller size and different dietary preferences, would this bird have the greatest chance of interacting with humans if it survived until the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary?
Yes I would think so, although they died out during the Late Pliocene for reasons that remain poorly understood.
The dating may be controversial, but it seems entirely plausible that Psilopterine mesopredators persisted until at least the end of the Pleistocene. The fossil record is so spotty and fragmentary. The find of a late Pleistocene Psilopterus referenced here is literally just part of one femur. South American paleontology still has so much to discover, I think. I wouldn't at all be surprised if future finds point to a much more recent survival of this lineage than we previously thought.
Some kids are afraid of the boogeyman I was scared of phorusracids
Only thing scary about big birds is the amount of time it would take to get one ready for Thanks Giving. Might have to start preheating the oven around Labor Day.
Imagine *if* they were still around and *could* tamed, eventually domesticated. Would like to ride one.
How would Phorusrachids contend with the teratorns?
Argentavis & Taubatornis in South America.
Aiolornis, Cathartornis & Teratornis for Titanis in North America.
Possible niche partioning in terms of times when they would be hunting and or different prey?
Cassowaries are intimidating and dangerous enough; I'm glad we don't have to face these down.
Fun fact: the most accepted theory on their extinction is that raccoons and their family ate their eggs as they disappeared around the same time they showed and would also explain the lack of large american flightless birds
that actually might explain the extinction of the bathorinithids in North America as well.
@@flightlesslord2688 I wouldn't be surprised. That might also explain why ostrich eggs are so much bigger than other animals eggs.
@@extraordinarytv5451 indeed
Actually, (though it's possible this may be the partially the case with procyon lotor and titanis) this could well not be the case as procyonids island hopped to South America 7.3 MYA and would've coexisted with some of the larger terror birds for several million years while titanis arrived in North America 5 MYA and became extinct 1.8 MYA meaning that it with the procyonids for over 3 million years and procyonids first appeared 22.6 MYA while bathornithids became extinct 20 MYA which would've allowed coexistence for 2.6 million years which would be too long for an animal to become extinct because of another animal. Not to mention that these cariamiform birds would've had to deal with other potential nest raiders (such as sparassodonts vs phorusracids and nimravids vs bathornithids) before meeting the procyonids meaning that procyonids wouldn't have been much of an issue for these birds. Currently, it's believed that terror birds went extinct was due to mainly climate change; it's possible newly appearing specific species of animals could've partially contributed to the extinction of a specific terror bird species as well but not the animals' clade as a whole. Also, if procyonids are the reason why there are no large American flightless birds, then how come rheas are still around.
@@ryanchen1819 I did not realize this. I checked fairly recently, is this a new study?
It would have been the craziest thing to witness these types of intense animals running around doing their own thing, and we just had to learn to navigate around them.. I totally can see them taking on larger prey by thrashing their muscular neck and strong clawed feet. So even though thier bite force wasn't the highest, it would have easily been enough to strike fear and respect into any human who possible was near one.. it's like a milder version of a raptor type dinosaur. The world would be a scarier place if we had to encounter these guys when going out in the wilderness...
I think, the main weakness of any flightless bird is the protection of its eggs. The endurance and efficiency when hunting should have exceeded mammalian hunters. But medium-sized mammalian carnivores may have feasted on the eggs reducing the reproduction rate below 1.
Those placental mammals displays everything and have made the modern fauna so boring.
Imagine if every different continent had its own megafauna, not necessarily tied to placental mammals, a better version of what Australia is today. It is the first time in the world’s history where just a single clade with artiodactyls, carnivores rodents and primates has taken over everything.
I’ve wondered if their reproductive methods contributed to their extinction. Smallish, nocturnal egg thieves and predators would have represented a challenge for a large egg-laying species, I reckon. How were their parenting skills?
When ratites are mentioned, as being capable swimmers, one might get the impression you're saying that ratites spread as flightless birds also. But the common ancestor of the extant (and recently extinct) ratites could fly -- with the loss of flight capability developing independently.
Sorry about the phrasing there. As concerns Phorusrachids, it would appear that they were already flightless before crossing the Atlantic, unlike the Ratites.
There's even a ratite to this day that can fly, the tinamous, though for some reason traditionally they weren't classed as ratites? Which confused me because when I saw them I knew immediately they were ratites by appearance, despite the fact they can fly. It never really dawned on me some people might assume all ratites are flightless.
Anyway, it's pretty clear to scientists today that they are ratites. The science books just need to catch up.
@@catpoke9557 -Yes indeed. Their heads and beaks are quite ratite-looking. As are their stout legs and feet. They get around quite well on the ground, and if they retain a lot of similarities with the common ancestor, it's easy to imagine how flightlessness evolved multiple times, separately, in that lineage.
@@cacogenicist Agreed. It makes a lot of sense why flightlessness is so common in ratites after you see the tinamou, ironically.
my friend had a parrot, never underestimate the power of a birds beak the parrot could crack a brazil nut like it was an m&m for us. i could see it easily cutting off a finger with little to know effort at all. terror birds are my favorite pre historic animal. it wouldnt surprise me if that 8 foot one could run up to a large animal and if it could get its head in the beak, crushing it while running next to it
Parrots are unique for great bite forces in virds.
Large parrots can actually crack bones, too. It's common for people to give their parrots chicken bones as a snack when they finish eating it. Granted the bone is cooked, but it's still insane how easily they crack large bones.
Wow! I always read that these birds lived in North America from the late pliocene to early pleistocene in North America. Now it has been confirmed that these animals lived in North America 5 million years ago!?! That is indeed something pretty new to me!
Such a shame they're gone, would have been amazing if we at least still had titanis running around the US
...and killing people. ))
No it's not. It will be terrifying
@@mhdfrb9971 you'd probably say the same about bears if they went extinct.
I wonder if we would have domesticated them...
@@alexanderthegreat6682 depends on how easy if at all possible it would have been. We have horses but no zebras because they're just too wild
Thank you! The era of the terror birds is so often overlooked!
great artwork! very to the point upload, a joy to listen to. amazing birds back then, well, i must say, i love the ones we have now, imagine one of those harrasing u at your great outdoors day ..... ;D
12:00 Look at those fingies. Terrible piece of paleo art.
Been waiting for this one since the teaser.
Funny that you showed a secretary bird. I was just thinking how they remind of terror birds a bit. Anyway, great video, very interesting topic
When Tweety has a bad day
I've always been in the North hemisphere USA to be exact, what the heck so the terror birds were in the USA 🤯😳 thank you a lot of channels say they weren't except Paleo world
Yeh, I remember Walking with Beasts saying they were wreaking havoc in Texas or nearby.
Q) What does a 300lb budgie say?
A) Anything he bloody wants to.
Dr.Polaris, if they never met humans and we're isolated to the Southern hemisphere then why do I get a very chill when I see these creatures even there skeletons.😳🤯 I first seen these on the old series Paleo World on the Channel TLC
May be from us being hunted by eagles which are similar if flighted, harpy eagles to this day can still kill children with ease even if it is rare.
They are animals, not monsters and we have no proof they would have even hunted humans. Humans have always been a bigger threat to the natural world than it has ever been to humanity.
@@Sara3346 very helpful for population control lol
This epsiode about Terror Birds was very awesome and I love it
Also I wish y'all a great day.
Actually, the youngest terror bird are from just 36,000 years ago! BUT they were psilopterus, which was one of the smallest, at under 2ft, so it wasn’t very impressive, and way LESS dangerous than other birds, by then
Where did you get 36k?
What'll it take for birds to return to giant flightless predatory lifestyles - AND to reach T. rex size?
I think that it will take the evolution of a tail, and the absence of a squatting stance. But I'm not sure that it is possible
I only learned about the bathornithids very recently. It honestly feels like people ignore them to push the 'outcompeted by smilodon' idea, ignoring the fact that bathornithids coexisted with sabre-tooth cats for a good while. Its seem more likely to me that egg eating mammals were the real culprit for both their extinctions. That and climate change. Those and the sebechids, and honestly the Miocene in general are really slept on in Cenozoic palaeomedia.
For some reason Terror Birds--now that their bid for APEX predator has failed--have always been a favorite of mine from the past.
They should bring these birds back if they can, I bet they are tasty, I wouldn't mind paying premium to eat some stuffed bird like that, or perhaps grilled.
I wish we could actually see a Terror Bird in the flesh as a Cryptic Creature, no joke.
Watching secretary birds stalk prey in Africa or caracaras in South America is the closest we'll get to these guys.
"these carnivorous birds were certainly striking animals." I see what you did there 😉
Not convinced it was intended as a pun, rather than solely a reference to their imposing size.
You can't use Allosaurus, great white shark, and smilodon to argue that Terror Birds hunted large prey when those 3 have teeth while terror birds didn't.
Someday I'll get a video on Bathornithidae and it's gonna be great! Hope you get there first! Thanks for another great video, Dr. Polaris!
I would love terror birds in Jurassic. Imagine we get a view of a raptor-like foot that leads us to think it’s a new dromaeosaur villain...only for a massive beak to come down and kill a character off, thereby introducing us to terror birds that have scared off or killed the local raptors.
My favorite plastic dinosaur figure!
Can we re-introduce them to texas and texas only?
I really hope that the next big paleo project after Prehistoric Planet will be about South Amarica during the first half of the Cenozoic era.
I know you're taking a break from South Amarica, but I would like to see a video on the sparassodonts the other group of carnivores from the island continent as well as the many different types of herbivores like the notoungulates.
Basically large feathered theropod dinosaurs that survived around the age of mammals. They sure are an interesting group of birds.
*large carnivore feathered theropod, well because rattites were also large theropod that still around with us
Most theropods were feathered and the ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosauromorphs were likely feathered too
Whenever I think of the Pokémon Blaziken, I don’t think of chickens, I think of this bird right here.
I wonder if these birds made a heavy clicking noise like the modern shoebill stork.
REVOLT AGAINST BIRB
RETURN TO DINOSOR
These birds apparently predate metrication but post-date antediluvian cubits.
South American megafauna is awesome, they also have the most interesting animas
Every time he mentions the scientific name my brain auto-incorrects to "Forrest Rocket"
4:48 Interesting though do you think it's possible that terror birds could've migrated from South America to Africa as the first appeared 62 MYA?
Nature loved Therepods so much, she tried to bring them back :-)
The presentation really clicked for me with the blue-checkered polo shirt on the human-for-scale. Great pictures, narration is smooth but rapid. Subscribed.
Always remember how Ray Harryhausen interpreted one in his movie Mysterious island
@ 12:02
the therror bird is shown here with two very distingtive claw on its time wings.
Is there clear fossil record of the forelimbs or did they really had this feature which looks more like a feature of the extinct Enantiornithes.
the only Aves having functioning clawed forelimbs are juvenile hoatzins.
EDIT: an emu also has a clawed forelimb but lacks the muscles to use it ( source AronRA)
Cassowaries and Ostriches alsoe have clawed forelimbs;
And few more birds if I remember well.
Just we dont see claws because they are covered by feathers.
@@Sephioss most flightless birds have them when they are babies
I did not expext to hear music from MoP in this video.
Very impressive, very terrifying, but also very satisfying, stuffed, scampi style, or fried. I'm not being glib, but one can't help but wonder. One chicken wing 🍗 could have fed a family.
I'll bet they'd be pretty delicious.
It’s a combination of eagle and ostrich
lol, for years now I thought those were referred to as "forest rockets"
Excellent and clearly presented as usual - if I could go back to any time in prehistory, this is the one I'd choose to visit
I duno but Forest Rockets sounds way cooler then terror birds. Forest Rockets are from Free World while Terror Birds are from Middle East. They lived in forest and were fast. Forest Rockets just works better.
I hear it more as Forest Rakids
Forest rockets are so badass.
Shouldn't the African secretary birds also be somewhat closely related? I'm pretty sure they are related to sariemas...
Oddly, they are not at all close relatives, being a good example of convergent evolution. Secretary birds are closer to hawks and eagles, while Phorusrachids and seriemas were close to falcons, parrots and songbirds.
"fukk this meteor! I'll make T-Rex again."
- mother Nature, 65-ish M years ago, on that tragic Monday. Probably.
One line in Walking with Beasts always bugged me from the start: "This is a world where birds eat horses." They were going for dramatic effect, I know, as the Gastornis was chasing the Propaleotherium. But birds still eat horses today; we just call them vultures.
Wait, It isn’t “forest rocket”??!?!??
What even is real anymore…..
Does anyone have a link to that intro music?
It would be interesting if scientists could recreate and bring back something like Titanis.
Since you showed an image of them in the video will you do a video on the terrorbird's lesser known cousins the bathornithids? Or is there not enough on them for a dedicated video?
I would probably think they would’ve been both the extinction of the terror bird, the prehistoric, mammal, carnivores, climate change, and etc. of North America. Of course we’re talking about.
Terror birds rule! 🐦
still around, descendants or the same design see the Secretary Bird and the RoadRunner Bird.
But they are not as big.
I like how you pronounce it "Forest Rockets". Seems appropriate.
I expect that even a relatively small change in temperature would be an issue when you lay eggs on the ground.
Did they though? Do we have evidence for or against ground based nests?
@@Sara3346 i mean their grounded birds with no arboreal capability, i dont see any other way theyd make nests
@@paleoleft Ground birds make nests though? Evern ostritches do, piles of leaves, dug depressions, a combination of both, etc?
@@Sara3346 no thats what im saying, the only feesible way theyd nest is on the ground lol
Dinosauria: All fine bros
K-pg extinction hits*
Phorusrhacids: Parry this you filthy casual
Seems most likely: Out-competed by pack/pride hunters along with climatic change.
It’s actually been found now that’s some terror birds had sickle-claws similar to maniraptorans. Whether these were used in hunting though isn’t known.
LEAVE, SERIEMAS.
I've always wondered, what would they taste like? A four hundred pound chicken would have fed a lot of people.
I wonder if terror birds killed their prey like seriemas do.
Either by kicking it to death, or by picking it up and slamming it onto the ground over and over again.
Forest Rockets
4:05/4:08 So how would this bird contend with the Gastornithids around this time?
It was significantly smaller than Gastornis, standing about 5 feet tall and presumably having a carnivorous diet.
@@dr.polaris6423 Not to mention that, like in South America, it would also have to contend with various crocodilians and early mammalian predators (creodonts and early carnivorans).
Dodo in steroid when you fall from flyer in redwood like 10 of those going after you
So do we no longer think humans may have encountered these terrifying creatures?
We do we think they were "terrifying" and a threat to humanity?
I wonder if these forest rockets would have been better to ride than horses and camels.
1:55 aww they have t rex arms. I swear that's what t rex arms really looked like, folded back like wings. No one believes me tho
They didn’t have the joint to fold them back like wings.
This started from dromaeosaurs onwards.
@@stefanostokatlidis4861 oh
And people question that birds are dinosaurs
I'm going on a wild goose chase, no no the geese are going to chase you Jurassic park The lost World. 😂 I'm not short, I'm built for speed.
The last hurrah of theropod dinosaurs.