Talk:Phorusrhacidae

message: Article says that Titanis is only Terror Bird known outside South America, but I found an article describing 'terror bird' find from Antarctica: here  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikoyan21 (talk • contribs) 01:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As will be seen in the updated text, more species have been found outside South America.
PainMan (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terror birds outside SA? 

message: ==="Popular Cultural" section===
I removed this section
:::Popular culture
The impressive size and fearsome habits of these birds, as well as the late survival of Titanis (which at one time was erroneously believed to have been encountered by humans), caused phorusrhacids to feature in some works of popular culture. Phorusrhacos longissimus made an appearance in one episode of the series Walking with Beasts and Prehistoric Park. The "Carakiller", a fictional bird from the "what-if" series The Future Is Wild, is a caracara which had evolved into a phorusrhacid-like animal that essentially fills the same ecological niche as Andalgalornis did 7 million years before the episode takes place.''
I see two problems with this section:
a.) it's too much like a trivia section although presented in narrative format.
b.) I don't see it's relevance to the "Terror Birds".  Two of the TV "series" (in actuality they were mini-series) cited, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and Prehistoric Park are documentaries.  Also, The Future is Wild is not fiction but rather a scientifically-based extrapolation on what Earth's fauna might look like in 5, 100, and 200 million years in the future.  What has a hypothetical creature to do with real--but extinct--ones?
===Update===
I updated the article to include the fact that species of terror birds have been found in Florida and Texas.
===Dating change===
Changed "millions of years ago", and similar phrases, to the scientific term Before Present or BP.
PainMan (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation of changes 

message: Changed "millions of years ago", and similar phrases, to the scientific term Before Present or BP.
PainMan (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Dating change

message: It seems that there could be a clear relationship to Therapod dinosaurs here, from which birds evolved.  Is there any research on this?  Cyberia1 (talk) 03:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Last I checked, the Terror birds are assumed to be descended from maniraptorian theropod dinosaurs, just like seriemas, chickens, and finches, and do not enjoy any special dinosaurian status.--Mr Fink (talk) 05:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Their shape is similar to "classic" theropod shapes, but to the best of my knowledge the similarity is due to convergent evolution, not because of direct descent from deinonychus, utahraptor, and company. They are part of the same maniraptor clade, though, of course. --70.156.126.124 (talk) 22:23, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They're neognath birds, so not closer to ancestral theropods than say, an ostrich. Don't look more like them than regular birds apart from their size either. FunkMonk (talk) 05:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to Therapods? 

message: Chihuahua? Spaniel? Labrador? Rottweiler? Totnesmartin (talk) 13:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "able to swallow dog-sized prey" 

message: Why did terror birds become extinct at the very beginning of the pleistocene i mean if you think about where titanis was discovered, it was found in the florida lakes where they were once dry land due to a drop in sea level but if mcfadden was right about terror birds becoming extinct 2 mya then why did they go extinct at that time?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aslan10000 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The last of the terror birds died out at the end of the Pliocene, not the beginning of the Pleistocene: secondly, species and taxa go extinct for a variety of reasons, whether climate change, new competitors, extinction of prey, introduction of unsuitable prey, and it's not always clear why extinction occurs--Mr Fink (talk) 22:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

text: The wikipedia article for Pleistocene does indeed say that it starts around 2.58 million years ago.  On the other hand, the abstract of the report, Revised age of the late Neogene terror bird (Titanis) in North America during the Great American Interchange  states that there is no evidence for Titanis surviving into the Pleistocene of North America.--Mr Fink (talk) 04:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

text: I already showed you an abstract about how there is no evidence that Titanis lived during the Pleistocene, and fossil evidence strongly suggests that humans arrived during or just after the last Ice Age, 50,000 years ago, as well as there being absolutely no evidence of humans ever encountering, let alone hunting Titanis.  I don't intend to be mean, I'm just stating facts.  If you wish to proceed with your pet hypothesis, you will have to collect actual evidence to support it, i.e., fossils of Titanis dating from the late Pleistocene that shows signs of having been butchered, and not simply presenting your own disbelief.  Otherwise, you're engaging in original research.--Mr Fink (talk) 02:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

text: Its best not to speculate. There are all sorts of reasons an animal can go extinct. Better carnivores, disease, lack of suitable prey, climate change, humans and so on. While its very much a valid scientific question, wikipedia is not for original research, and definately not for speculation. 59.167.111.154 (talk) 01:40, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause for Extinction 

message: Aslan10000 may be off his rocker a bit, but the Gelasian age (2.6-1.8 Mya) was moved to the Pleistocene, so that means the birds lived into the Pleistocene.  The contradiction arises because that change wasn't ratified officially (i.e. worldwide) until this year, so the 2006 paper on Titanis uses the older North American terminology that included the Gelasian as part of the Pliocene.  KarlM (talk) 08:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, then, you have a link to the papers so we can have the appropriate references?--Mr Fink (talk) 12:51, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The citation is here.  It's cited in the Pleistocene article, which is linked to from here, so I don't see a need for a separate citation in this article.  KarlM (talk) 10:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Perhaps if you had made the effort to bother to make an attempt at research, rather than simply justifying your claims just because or "that's not cool", we could have avoided this edit war to begin with.--Mr Fink (talk) 02:10, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Except that the book refers to McFadden's 2006 paper, and doesn't mention that he then revised his statements in his other paper in 2007.--Mr Fink (talk) 00:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

text: I only fixed the terminology.  Don't use that as an excuse to include discredited material.  The Megafauna book only has a half-hearted endorsement/hypothetical discussion of Baskin's 1995 paper, which is refuted by McFadden's (which has Baskin as a co-author, BTW), and both are already cited in the first paragraph.  Give it a rest.  KarlM (talk) 02:30, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

text: So how is "unproven evidence" a reason or excuse to include discredited material?--Mr Fink (talk) 21:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

text: In fact I've found some evidence from Pleistocene terror birds, but it's not from Titanis, but from findings fro Uruguay. One of the fossil cited by Blanco and Jones (2005) is about 450.000 years ago and another more recently, of Alvarenga et al (2010) is about only 17,000 years ago . Then I don't see problem in extent the temporal range of the family. --Rextron (talk) 19:01, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extinction date 

message: I removed this statement
:::"...Thus discrediting any theory that humans were the cause of their demise, and giving credence to the theory that they were simply outcompeted by the superior North American Mammalian predators when the Americas collided."
in that, 1) I don't recall hearing any theory or hypothesis claiming that Titanis was specifically killed by humans, 2) "superior North American Mammalian predators" sounds too unencyclopedic and biased, 3) there's also the possibility of climate change, and 4) The Americas didn't collide: the Panamanian Isthmus emerged between them.--Mr Fink (talk) 17:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I doubt that there ever was a widely-held hypothesis in which these birds were wiped out by humans - humans have only been around for a couple of million years at most, after all - and "superior"? Definitely not scientific, attaching perceived value to a whole group of animals just for being mammals.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by RadicalTwo (talk • contribs) 19:54, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Modern humans have only been around for the past 200,000 years, even.--Mr Fink (talk) 19:58, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

text: And where in the article does it say that humans were what drove the terrorbirds into extinction?--Mr Fink (talk) 04:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Why are you (Aslan10000) keeping on with this nonsense?  "Late Pleistocene" = 1.8 million years ago, in South America.  Humans got there, at the earliest, 30,000 years ago, more likely 10,000.  KarlM (talk) 09:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

text: The thing is, we get the impression that you always want to find any reason to justify the inclusion of the evidence-less claim that phorusrhacids were hunted into extinction by humans.--Mr Fink (talk) 01:19, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation of Removed Statement 

message: Some reconstructions of Terror Birds show a grasping foot i.e. Titanis. Is this diagnostic of Terror Birds or not? A large flightless bird with a grasping foot suggests that it subdued its prey with its feet like modern birds of prey. In addition they have strongly hooked beaks for tearing off large chunks to swallow, also like modern birds of prey. A strongly hooked beak and strong grasping feet are both unlike Seriemas and rather suggests their ancestors were morphologically conventional birds of prey. Another point of comparison is the skull of the Philippine Eagle and the terrestrial legs of the Secretary Bird or Savanna Hawk.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TSpencerGrow (talk • contribs) 01:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Grasping Feet?

message: terror birds, were a clade of large carnivorous flightless birds
According to an article dated 8/29/2013 on Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829214559.htm), new research from the University of Bonn focusing on the ratio of calcium isotopes in Phorusrhacidae fossils indicates that the ratio is similar to those of herbivore mammals and dinosaurs instead of to the carnivorous kinds. --Mirrordor 05:16, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is actually talking about Gastornis and not the Phorushracids.--Mr Fink (talk) 05:36, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carnivorous bird? 

message: May we revisit this section? The whole land bridge / carnivore mammal thing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Interchange - depends on the Isthmus of Panama emerging around 2.5Myr ago. http://www.livescience.com/50450-when-panama-land-bridge-appeared.html - if it's correct - pushes that date back another 10Myr and makes the whole Extinction section here, together with other articles, pretty bogus. At the least it would have to be rewritten as continental proximity rather than land-bridging.
:There was indeed some island-hopping or short-range oceanic dispersal starting about 10 million years ago (in fact Titanis was one of the early northward migrants), as has long been known, but a broad land connection and massive migration did not get started until about 3 Ma ago, and nothing is going to overturn this, no matter what some press release might say. WolfmanSF (talk) 23:35, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extinction 

message: The obvious conclusion from the timing of phorusrhacid extinction is that competition from carnivoran mammals was the driving force. If someone can cite peer-reviewed research suggesting otherwise, fine, but we cannot describe the normative explanation as some kind of irrational dogma. Titanis did invade North America, but not all that successfully; its range was limited, it never diversified, and it didn't survive very long. Quite likely it had a competitive advantage at the beginning in having an appearance and predatory style distinct from those of all previously resident N. American carnivores, which helped it gain a foothold. Regarding S. America, consider these statements I just removed: "Carnivorans such as Cyonasua had already invaded South America in the Miocene, yet this had no effect on the phorusrhacids. In addition phorusrhacids appear to have been already suffered a great loss of diversity in the Pliocene before canids or felids reached South America (at which point only one subfamily and a small number of species were left)." Isn't there a contradiction in saying the early procyonid carnivoran migrants had no effect, and then pointing out that phorusrhacid diversity was already in decline before the felids and canids (not to mention ursids) showed up?  WolfmanSF (talk) 00:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: If anyone wants to claim that something other than competition was the main factor behind the extinction of phorusrhacids, they will have to cite appropriate sources laying out this case. Whether or not sparassodonts went extinct due to carnivoran competition is a separate issue (and not one that can be settled by a single paper). Let's be rational and not politicize this into a battle over the dignity of native South American predators. Some of us may be predisposed to root for the "underdogs", but evolution doesn't. Regarding the statement that "there is no primary data in the fossil record that actually bears this out", what exactly would such primary data consist of? Regarding the straw man argument that it is wrong to consider mammals "superior" to birds, obviously there were a number of situations in the Cenozoic when large flightless avian predators were successful. All those situations were temporary. Both carnivorans and phorusrhacids evolved over time. Carnivorans were generally present over a much larger fraction of Earth's land area, and that may have given them an evolutionary edge over the long term. WolfmanSF (talk) 00:49, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

text: I'm sorry that we are devolving into an ideological battle here. Are we doing readers a service by suggesting that all South America's large native warm-blooded predators, which had flourished for tens of millions of years, mysteriously died out due to causes other than competition within a few million years after carnivorans reached the continent? Do we also believe that the thylacine's extinction in Australia following the introduction of dingos was just a coincidence? WolfmanSF (talk) 05:41, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

text: It isn't about being 'smarter,' it is about being biologically superior predators - which simply outclassed the terror birds and pushed them into a niche population that was much more susceptible to changes in climate, disease, et al. 2603:6080:21F0:6140:B59D:8A4:D4AA:7100 (talk) 14:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Competition as a factor in extinction

message: Were there any terror birds in Pleistocene South America?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarsath3 (talk • contribs) 02:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You can see what the article says about Psilopterus. Whether the claim of late Pleistocene survival of this genus will be generally accepted is not clear. WolfmanSF (talk) 06:33, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

text: If we knew of any cases, they would be indicated here. WolfmanSF (talk) 18:11, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pleistocene South American terror birds? 

message: B. burmeisteri Taxonomic position is highly controversial Ostrich2Emperor (talk) 17:01, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  is Brontornis burmeisteri an Anseriformes or Cariamiformes 

message: Shouldnt the Film Called Terror bird be here since its the first Film of Ever to have terror birds  and where the games with Terror birds in it Kamata kun overlord 2016 (talk) 15:30, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure if it's really that notable. Either way, they were already featured in 10,000 BC (film). FunkMonk (talk) 21:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wasnt there a film named Terror Bird