The piece found was a claw that a family had kept in their home for 16 years without knowing its origin. It is a bird that became extinct 2 million years ago and its species was considered a super predator.
A father and his son made a historic find This Wednesday when I found Fossil remains of a prehistoric bird known as the “terror bird”which originated approximately 1,000 years ago 60 million of years in Uruguay.
The Phorusrhacidaewere a group of birds that inhabited most of the American territory, including Uruguay, and that were extinguished does 2 millions of years. They were depredators and of a big size, reaching almost three meters Tall.
The discovery was made by Facundo Chamorro and his fatherwho gave him the fossil claw that they found at Paleontologist Andrés Rinderknechtfor analysis.
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@fosilesdeluruguay
The photo and video of the claw was published on the Instagram account of the specialized site Fossils of Uruguayunder the text: “Tremendous news for the paleontology of our country”.
The paleontologist determined that the piece analyzed was the first distal phalanx from the foot of a terror bird, the first and only one identified in Uruguay that was found in Saint Joseph.
The story of discovery
Facundo Chamorro and his father saw a photo of a woman on an Instagram account claw-like that had been found in the Antarctica with the description of “terror birds.” At that moment, the family realized that they had an identical claw in their home 16 years and they handed it over for analysis out of curiosity as to whether it belonged to the same bird.
Paleontologist Andrés Rinderknecht instantly realized that he was in front of a promising element and so it was indeed.If there are rare creatures to be found in Uruguay, they are the ‘terror birds’“giant birds that lived in South America and North America millions of years ago,” the paleontologist commented.
“It’s a claw from a forroraco’s foot”he added about the historic discovery and commented that they are known as “terror birds” because their larger species were superpredatorsthat is, predators that have no natural predators, in each region they inhabited.
These birds inhabited mostly South America does 60 million years and replaced the dinosaurs regarding their role as predators.
Source: Ambito
