The last terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae): new evidence from the late Pleistocene of Uruguay

Jones, Washington; Rinderknecht, Andrés; Alvarenga, Herculano; Montenegro, Felipe; Ubilla, Martı́n

doi:10.1007/s12542-017-0388-y

Cited by 14 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…2 ). Fragmentary remains of smaller terror birds (< 10 kg) are known from the Late Pleistocene of Uruguay 66 , which could imply that they persisted into the last part of the Quaternary. Terror birds survived in North America until the early Pleistocene 67 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New radiometric 40Ar–39Ar dates and faunistic analyses refine evolutionary dynamics of Neogene vertebrate assemblages in southern South America

Prevosti

Romano

Forasiepi

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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The vertebrate fossil record of the Pampean Region of Argentina occupies an important place in South American vertebrate paleontology. An abundance of localities has long been the main basis for constructing the chronostratigraphical/geochronological scale for the late Neogene–Quaternary of South America, as well as for understanding major patterns of vertebrate evolution, including the Great American Biotic Interchange. However, few independently-derived dates are available for constraining this record. In this contribution, we present new 40Ar/39Ar dates on escorias (likely the product of meteoric impacts) from the Argentinean Atlantic coast and statistically-based biochronological analyses that help to calibrate Late Miocene–Pliocene Pampean faunal successions. For the type areas of the Montehermosan and Chapadmalalan Ages/Stages, our results delimit their age ranges to 4.7–3.7 Ma and ca. 3.74–3.04 Ma, respectively. Additionally, from Buenos Aires Province, dates of 5.17 Ma and 4.33 Ma were recovered for “Huayquerian” and Montehermosan faunas. This information helps to better calibrate important first appearances of allochthonous taxa in South America, including one of the oldest records for procyonids (7.24–5.95 Ma), cricetids (6.95–5.46 Ma), and tayassuids (> 3.74 Ma, oldest high-confidence record). These results also constrain to ca. 3 Ma the last appearances of the autochthonous sparassodonts, as well as terror birds of large/middle body size in South America. South American faunal turnover during the late Neogene, including Late Pliocene extinctions, is interpreted as a consequence of knock-on effects from global climatic changes and initiation of the icehouse climate regime.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New radiometric 40Ar–39Ar dates and faunistic analyses refine evolutionary dynamics of Neogene vertebrate assemblages in southern South America

Prevosti

Romano

Forasiepi

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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“…Cenozoic cooling of the Earth's poles has contributed to high-latitude extinction of functional groups, particularly following the onset of Southern Hemisphere glaciation before the end-Eocene [59,60]. Few data exist on the functional groups lost by birds either regionally or globally during the late Cenozoic (but see the extinction of the Phorusrhacidae, a group of large flightless carnivores, in the late Pleistocene [61]). Many of the bird and bivalve functional groups present in the tropics and absent at high latitudes are currently non-viable life modes for these high-latitude environments ( photosymbiosis in bivalves and frugivory in birds), but determining the relative roles of extinction and environmental filtering in shaping these patterns will require additional, spatially explicit fossil data.…”

Section: (B) Extinction and Functional Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Common latitudinal gradients in functional richness and functional evenness across marine and terrestrial systems

et al. 2019

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Functional diversity is an important aspect of biodiversity, but its relationship to species diversity in time and space is poorly understood. Here we compare spatial patterns of functional and taxonomic diversity across marine and terrestrial systems to identify commonalities in their respective ecological and evolutionary drivers. We placed species-level ecological traits into comparable multi-dimensional frameworks for two model systems, marine bivalves and terrestrial birds, and used global speciesoccurrence data to examine the distribution of functional diversity with latitude and longitude. In both systems, tropical faunas show high total functional richness (FR) but low functional evenness (FE) (i.e. the tropics contain a highly skewed distribution of species among functional groups). Functional groups that persist toward the poles become more uniform in species richness, such that FR declines and FE rises with latitude in both systems. Temperate assemblages are more functionally even than tropical assemblages subsampled to temperate levels of species richness, suggesting that high species richness in the tropics reflects a high degree of ecological specialization within a few functional groups and/or factors that favour high recent speciation or reduced extinction rates in those groups.royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rspb Proc. R. Soc. B 286: 20190745

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“…In our interpretation, Psilopterinae remains a unique clade, despite low posterior probability support, given their overall similarities in size and inferred ecologies [1,7,12,38,40]. Given their similar size and morphology [1], and the phylogenetic results of previous authors [10,24], we assign P. affinis and P. colzecus to Psilopterinae.…”

Section: (I) Interrelationships Of Phorusrhacidaementioning

confidence: 48%

“…Body size is expected to reflect the relative prey size of each species [5][6][7], while cursoriality is a measure of locomotor style [8,9]. We obtained measurements of phorusrhacid fossils from the literature or from photographs (electronic supplementary material, S1 Table and S2 Table) [1,6,10,30,[37][38][39][40]. Due to the limited number of specimens, we used averaged values in our analyses (electronic supplementary material, S1 Text).…”

Section: (B) Ecomorphologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution and ecology of gigantism in terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae)

LaBarge,

Gardner,

Organ

2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae) were large flightless apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic. Here, we estimate a new phylogeny for phorusrhacids using Bayesian inference. We demonstrate phylogenetic evidence for a monophyletic Patagornithinae and find significant support for a distinct crown group associated with the quintessential ‘terror bird’ characteristics. We use this phylogeny to analyse the evolution of body size and cursoriality. Our results reveal that size overlap was rare between co-occurring subfamilies, supporting the hypothesis that these traits were important for niche partitioning. We observe that gigantism evolved in a single clade, containing Phorusrhacinae and Physornithinae. The members of this lineage were consistently larger than all other phorusrhacids. Phorusrhacinae emerged following the extinction of Physornithinae, suggesting the ecological succession of the apex predator niche. The first known phorusrhacine, Phorusrhacos longissimus , was gigantic but significantly smaller and more cursorial than any physornithine. These traits likely evolved in response to the expansion of open environments. Following the Santacrucian SALMA, phorusrhacines increased in size, further converging on the morphology of Physornithinae. These findings suggest that the evolution and displacement of body size drove terror bird niche partitioning and competitive exclusion controlled phorusrhacid diversity.

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The last terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae): new evidence from the late Pleistocene of Uruguay

Cited by 14 publications

References 23 publications

New radiometric 40Ar–39Ar dates and faunistic analyses refine evolutionary dynamics of Neogene vertebrate assemblages in southern South America

New radiometric 40Ar–39Ar dates and faunistic analyses refine evolutionary dynamics of Neogene vertebrate assemblages in southern South America

Common latitudinal gradients in functional richness and functional evenness across marine and terrestrial systems

The evolution and ecology of gigantism in terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae)

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