Teeth marks suggest ‘terror bird’ was killed by reptile 13 million years ago

Scientists say that 13 million years ago, a big avian reptile tooth marks on the foot bone, known as a terrorist bird, may have killed it by another big hunter, said scientists.

Terrorist birds were top predators – they could have been longer than a human and had powerful legs and bent, meat -sight beak.

Paliantologists in Colombia match the fossil foot bone of one of these terrible birds, or a crocodile, or a crocodile, matches the teeth for a reptile.

The 3D digital scan of cutting allowed scientists to re -organize what they believe that the “death fight” was that the terrorist bird was not alive.

New study, Journal Published in Biology LettersThe museum collection compared to the size and size of the teeth has skulls and teeth marks of hunters such as crocodiles.

This provides rare evidence, the researchers say, at that time interaction between two extinct top predators.

The leg bone that scientists studied were first detected in the Tatakoa desert of Colombia more than 15 years ago.

When the bird lived in the swamp of that area 13 million years ago, it would be about 2.5 meters long and used its feet and beaks and ripped over its prey.

Scientists are not able to prove whether it was, especially, was killed in an unfortunate terrorist bird attack, or if Caemon sarcashed its remains.

“There is no indication of treatment in the cutting mark on the bone,” explained the Lead Researcher Andres link from the Universidad de Loss Andes in Bogota, Columbia.

“So if it was not already dead, it died in the attack. It was the last day when the bird was on this planet – then a piece of its leg bone was found after 13 million years later.”

The Tatkoa desert is the home of a rich deposit of fossils from an era known as Central Miocene.

At that time, it was an humid marsh, where the river sedes trapped and implicated the bones of dead animals and fed the fossils, resulting in preserved residues found today.

This particular bone was first discovered by local fossil collector Cesar Augusto Peromo about 15 years ago.

Colombian scientists worked closely with Mr. Pardomo, studying and listed fossils collected in his museum. This was when scientific museums were working that he realized that this fist -shaped piece of the leg came from a terrorist bird.

It was an exciting discovery – terrorist bird fossils are rare. But Dr. The link and their colleagues were also fascinated by puncture marks in the bone, clearly made by the teeth of another powerful hunter.

This new analysis of marks has shown that they match the most closely close to a extinct Cammon species, called a crocodile, which would have been up to five meters longer.

Researchers say that it will ambush its prey from the edge of the water, a lot of crocodiles and camens have done today.

“I think it was waiting for the victim to be near,” Dr. Link said.

If it was actually a fight between two top poachers, then Dr. The link states that an ancient ecosystems provide insight into the system. This suggests that cruel terrorist birds were much more unsafe for predators than already thought.

Dr. The link told BBC News, “Every piece of a body helps us understand a lot about life on the planet in the past.”

“This is something that surprises me – how a small bone can complete the story.”