Talk:Phorusrhacidae
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[edit] Terror birds outside SA?
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)
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- As will be seen in the updated text, more species have been found outside South America.
PainMan (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Explanation of changes
[edit] "Popular Cultural" section
I removed this section
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- Popular culture
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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?
[edit] Update
I updated the article to include the fact that species of terror birds have been found in Florida and Texas.
[edit] 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)
[edit] Relationship to Therapods?
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)
- 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)
- 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)
