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When you think of birds, you always think of eagles soaring in the sky, or songbirds with gentle warblers, or colorful parrots.
But when the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs is becoming accepted by the public, we now see pigeons that are only chasing breadcrumbs.
It's also hard to imagine that its ancestors were once the top predators who ruled the planet.
But what is less known is that real birds once occupied the top of the food chain, dominated the grasslands, and also competed with rampant mammals for dominance, which is today's protagonist - the dinosaur crane.
The crane (scientific name Phorusrhacos), also known as the frightened bird.
It was a common predator in Pliocene South America 62 million to 2 million years ago (the ornithoeae family did not really become extinct until 15,000 years), and the largest carnivorous bird ever seen on Earth.
They are huge, standing 2.5 meters tall, weighing about 150 kilograms (the highest record is 250 kilograms), with a huge head nearly half a meter long and a huge vise-like beak.
The now extinct family of giant birds is also known as the "Birds of Terror".
Although the crane is classified as a bird, it has no ability to fly.
On either side of the huge body there is a pair of cute short wings, of course, these are not used to sell cute, but to maintain their balance, to prevent falling down when chasing and swooping down on prey.
Birds have traditionally been considered by humans to be creatures that could soar across the sky, and after the evolution of theropod dinosaurs, they were freed from the shackles of land and could better migrate and hunt.
But like ostriches, emus, these "chickens that walk on the ground", give up the ability to fly, settle on the ground, people can't help but wonder?
How did birds like this one, which could only walk on the ground, evolve in the brutal Cenozoic, and how did they compete with mammals for a place?
The discovery of the ornithopod family gives the answer: the truly strong will not choose to escape, but choose to fight head-on!
Next, let Xiaobian take you into the world of dinosaurs ten million years ago, to see how this once prosperous crane dynasty rose up and how it went to extinction...
The discovery of the crane
The oldest family of ornithoppers (the family to which the mole crane belongs) is 50 million years old and was found in Europe. Subsequently, the distribution range of the ornithopod family gradually narrowed.
Since about 27 million years ago, they have only been seen in South America, which was isolated for nearly 30 million years.
The first dinosaur fossil was found in Argentina in 1887, a jaw bone in a bone found in the Santa Cruz Formation formation.
Florentino Ameghino first described it as belonging to the purpose of poor teeth, and then in 1891 the bone was found to belong to birds.
Other remains were found from different points in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz. The physical difference between European and South American organisms is very large.
In South America, the head of the dinosaur can reach the size of a horse's head, which shows that in isolated South America, the dinosaur has evolved in order to survive, occupying the position of the top predator in South America with a huge body.
The Titan Dinosaur, also known as the Titan Bird, belongs to the Phorusrhacinae subfamily Phorusrhacinae under the family Phlusrhacos.
In the early 1960s, the company was founded by Benjamin M. Benjamin I. Waller was found in a cave in Florida, USA.
He gave the fossil bird skeleton he found to paleontologist Pierce Brodkorb, who found it to be a fossil of a prehistoric giant bird and named it the Titan Bird, which was subsequently discovered to be an evolutionary branch of the mole crane.
At the end of the Pliocene 2 million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama was uplifted, North America was connected to South America, and some cranes evolved from South America to North America.
After the extinction of the south American dinosaur, it continued until 15,000 years ago.
Paleontologist Luis Chiappe described one of the largest species of cranes in 2007: Kelenken, named after the birds of the Tehuelche people, an indigenous patagonia.
"This is the largest known dinosaur skull, and in fact the largest bird skull ever found, at 2 feet and a half (76 centimeters) long."
It is a huge monster with a huge hook at the end of its beak, like an eagle.
We know that a small parrot, such as a crowned parrot, can bite your finger off.
Imagine how much damage a bird with such a large skull and beak can bring. How they kill their prey is also obvious. ”
habit
Eating habits
As a large chocobo, the crane did not choose a rich source of plants and berries, but chose to feed on reptiles and mammals.
The crane is armed from top to bottom with a series of large killers of predators, and its half-meter-long beak can bite its prey tightly.
The spine of the prey is broken by a violent beating before feeding with a large hook at the end of the beak.
The crane also has claws on its feet, which can give a fatal blow to the prey it catches at any time.
This eating habit can be found through the creatures of the modern ornithopper family, called the Crane family, which also tends to use the method of wrestling when preying on lizards or mice, although the prey of the crane may be dozens of times larger.
Hunting methods
There was much controversy over the method of prey hunting, and early paleontologists believed that the bulky and large birds of the dinosaur crane could only survive through ambushes and scavenging.
However, with the excavation of a large number of fossils, it has been found that the crane has developed large leg muscles and a swift posture, even if it weighs 200 kilograms, it can reach a speed of 90 kilometers per hour at full speed.
It is simply the Bolt of the "Walking Chicken", with almost no prey to escape the pursuit of the dinosaur, coupled with the steel claws, the dinosaur gradually climbs to the top of the land predator.
It is also this powerful predatory ability that the crane gave up living in groups and chose to hunt alone, and the arrogance of the crane also laid the groundwork for its own extinction.
Habit controversy
However, German paleontologists have caused a lot of opposition by geochemically analyzing the bones of dinosaurs, saying that the calcium isotope composition of the dinosaurs suggests that they are more likely to be herbivores.
Because the large head of the crane is completely different from the common herbivorous birds, scientists prefer that the crane is a predatory bird that combines scavenger and hunting, so the composition of calcium isotopes will have herbivorous characteristics.
A recent study showed that cranes are difficult to turn when running at extremely fast speeds, which greatly reduces the ability to predate, and in order to make up for the lack of predation, the crane may bend to survive on scavenging.
Species evolution
The rise of the Crane Dynasty
60 million years ago, South America was an isolated continent, and the steppe jungle was the main living environment, when after the mass extinction of Cretaceous organisms, reptiles fell off the altar.
Mammals, birds, insects and other creatures have survived the most difficult times, and the ornithopod creatures isolated on the "big islands" of South America have found excellent opportunities for development.
Until 10 million years ago in South America, there were no large mammals, during which time the dinosaur took over the entire South American steppe, and the honed and evolved dinosaur had a large body and sharp claws, plus a half-meter-large head.
They became a nightmare for young mammals in South America, and birds succeeded in suppressing mammals for tens of millions of years, which was also the most prosperous period of the "Dinosaur Dynasty".
Battle for supremacy
Until 8 million years ago, the indigenous South American saber-toothed tiger appeared in the history of the earth, and the bag saber-toothed tiger, unlike the saber-toothed tiger in North America, was the product of unrelated parallel evolution.
They are also large and fierce predators, but the ferocious bag saber-toothed tiger and other bag dog animals have not excluded the former overlord dinosaurs from the historical stage, but the two ruled South America together.
This picture of harmonious coexistence lasted for millions of years, and what the bag saber-toothed tiger did not expect was that until they became extinct, they could not fight their old rival, the dinosaur.
This also shows the terrible point of the crane.
The disappearance of dynasties
Then 2 million years ago, at the end of the Pliocene, the Isthmus of Panama was uplifted, and North America was finally connected to South America.
The North American continent is nourished by the vast Central Great Plains and the Mississippi River, where the organisms evolve fast and adapt strongly, and the North American paleontology at that time can be called an ace force, with famous American saber-toothed tigers, jaguars and other high-grade mammals.
When they first set foot on the South American continent, they turned the former South American "paradise" into a "hell" for them to kill.
The weak creatures of South America faced the fierce mammals of North America like greenhouse flowers, and after a short period of competition, eventually reached the point of extinction, including the bag saber-toothed tiger that competed with the crane.
Some of the dinosaurs seemed to smell the danger, a small group of dinosaurs dragged their families around the enemy's vision and ran backwards to North America, and the remaining dinosaurs in South America also reached the point of extinction after a short period of resistance, and later this group of dinosaurs that came to North America evolved into a new species, that is, the aforementioned Titan bird.
This crane, which escaped the claws of saber-toothed tigers, settled in North America, and although they could still ride the grasslands through fierce predatory techniques, the current dinosaurs had long lost the glory of their former race.
Interestingly, 2 million years later, ancient humans began to travel from Asia to North America via the Bering Strait.
The Titan bird did not really become extinct until 15,000 years ago, and in terms of time, ancient humans would have to face this terrible carnivorous bird on the grassland, and dinosaurs and mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other creatures became important creatures against humans after the Ice Age.
There are still many myths and legends about titan birds in some places, and in many games, the image of the dinosaur is often used as a powerful predator.
Dinosaur vs Destruction Bladed Tiger
Ancient human migration routes
Pleistocene North American animal comparison
The mystery of extinction
There are also many theories about the extinction of the dinosaur, and the extinction of the dinosaur here is a guide to the dinosaurs on the American continent, and the Titan bird is not considered.
Although the dinosaur is inferior to the mighty jaguar and saber-toothed tiger from North America, it still has room for maneuver after hundreds of years of competition with the pocket saber-toothed tiger, but the biggest weakness of birds is the ability to breed offspring.
The bird eggs left on the ground by the dinosaur became the target of wolves and other carnivores, and the early proud dinosaurs developed the habit of hunting alone, and it was difficult to sing alone, which could not prevent the wolves known for group hunting from stealing their homes, so they eventually went to a desperate situation.
Another theory is that the ancestor of the crane was a Tyrannosaurus rex, inheriting the weakness of difficult to adapt to environmental changes, and geological processes changed the habitat environment, so that the crane failed to adapt and gradually declined.
The once powerful Crane Dynasty, under various pressures, eventually disintegrated, and the birds who did not want to fly took a step to dominate the earth, but unfortunately this step did not go far enough, and the mammals came later, leaving a regret.
Reference:
The pictures are from the Internet
Wikipedia:Dinosaurs
Ancient Top Predator Big Bird[J]. Grand View garden of science, 2014, 000(008):58-59.
ZHAO Yue. Under the rule of the giant beak (Part 1)[J]. Fossils, 2007, 000(002):16-19.
https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv3797099/
https://www.zhihu.com/question/35942624/answer/65156339
Editor: Du Xinyu
Proofreader: Zhang Tengfei