Teeth marks recommend ‘terror chicken’ was killed by reptile 13 million years in the past

Teeth marks made on the leg bone of a big avian reptile often known as a terror chicken 13 million years in the past recommend a fair larger predator might have killed it, scientists say.

Terror birds have been prime predators – they might be taller than a human and had highly effective legs and hooked, flesh-ripping beaks.

Palaeontologists in Colombia matched tooth marks on the fossilised leg bone of considered one of these fearsome birds to a caiman, or a crocodile-like reptile.

3D digital scans of the bites allowed the scientists to reconstruct what they consider was a “battle to the death” that the fear chicken didn’t survive.

The new examine, published in the journal Biology Letters, in contrast the dimensions and form of the tooth marks to the skulls and tooth of crocodile-like predators in museum collections.

It supplies uncommon proof, the researchers say, of an interplay between two extinct prime predators on the time.

The leg bone the scientists studied was first unearthed greater than 15 years in the past in Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert.

When the chicken lived within the swamps of that space 13 million years in the past, it could have been about 2.5m tall and would have used its legs and beak to carry down and rip at its prey.

What the scientists usually are not in a position to show conclusively is whether or not this specific, unlucky terror chicken was killed within the assault, or if the caiman scavenged its stays.

“There is no sign of healing in the bite marks on the bone,” defined lead researcher Andres Link from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

“So if it wasn’t already dead, it died in the attack. That was the last day that bird was on this planet – then a piece of its leg bone was found 13 million years later.”

The Tatacoa Desert is dwelling to wealthy deposits of fossils from an epoch often known as the Middle Miocene.

At that point, it was a moist swamp, the place river sediments trapped and fossilised the bones of lifeless animals, ensuing within the preserved stays discovered there immediately.

This specific bone was first found about 15 years in the past by native fossil collector César Augusto Perdomo.

The Colombian scientists labored intently with Mr Perdomo, learning and cataloging fossils that he has gathered in his museum. It was when scientists have been working within the museum that they realised that this fist-sized piece of leg bone got here from a terror chicken.

That was an thrilling discovery – terror chicken fossils are uncommon. But Dr Link and his colleagues have been additionally fascinated by the puncture marks within the bone, which had clearly been made by the tooth of one other highly effective predator.

This new evaluation of the marks revealed that they most intently match an extinct caiman species referred to as Purussaurus neivensis, a crocodilian that will have been as much as 5 metres lengthy.

The researchers say it could have ambushed its prey from the water’s edge, very similar to crocodiles and caimans do immediately.

“I would imagine it was waiting for prey to be nearby,” mentioned Dr Link.

If this was certainly a battle between two apex predators, Dr Link says that gives perception into an historical ecosystem. It reveals that ferocious terror birds have been way more weak to predators than beforehand thought.

“Every piece of a body helps us to understand so much about life on the planet in the past,” Dr Link advised BBC News.

“That’s something that amazes me – how one tiny bone can complete the story.”