Verne’s Terror Birds
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 1st, 2007
Darn, do we all have to rethink our visions of the prehistoric world as shown in the 1961 movie, Mysterious Island, based on the Jules Verne story, which had Terror Birds and humans battling? If you haven’t seen it, you should, or better yet, read the book (especially the one translated by Sidney Kravitz - 14 years in the making - with the original 19th century art).
The movie Mysterious Island is a classic cryptofiction story about a group of Union soldiers escaping from their Civil War prison via balloon, and landing on a remote island filled with prehistoric survivors, including memorable giant birds that terrorize the humans. (There was a remake made in 2005, starring Kyle MacLachlan, but I’m talking about the 1961 movie.)
A model (above) of the Mysterious Island’s Terror Bird (using the earlier spelling Phororhacos) from MonstersInMotion.com.
Yesterday, I mentioned the skull (above) of the Terror Bird in my “Chupacabras” blog, as one of the items on my wish list. As fate would have it, the BBC News published a news item the same day on another giant bird species, also one of these so-called “Terror Birds.”
As the article mentions: “Early humans could never have come into contact with the giant carnivorous ‘terror bird’ Titanis walleri, research suggests. It had been thought the fearsome beasts became extinct as little as 10,000 years ago - a time when humans shared their North American habitat. But a US team has now revised this date to about two million years earlier.”
Coming up with an earlier date, however, has shattered the notion that the bird walked across a land bridge from South America to North America when they became connected by the Panamanian land bridge about 3.5 million years ago, according to Professor Bruce MacFadden, a palaeontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History and lead author of the Geology paper on the findings.
But based on the new chemical dates that we have established, that previous hypothesis is no longer correct. What we now believe, based on the age of the Titanis from Texas, is that Titanis dispersed from South America into North America about five million years ago, significantly earlier than the land bridge formed. Did it swim across? Or did it raft across on a float? There were a series of closely spaced volcanic islands, which now forms Panama, so maybe it swam from one to the other - but we really don’t know. Professor Bruce MacFadden
See the full article here.
An illustration shows the size of a large terror-bird species compared to that of an average-size man. The extinct group of predatory, flightless birds dominated South America from 65 million to 2.5 million years ago. The largest known terror-bird species grew nearly 10 feet (3 meters) tall and weighed 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms).
Illustration by Gustavo Lecuona
The “Terror Bird”Phorusrhacos was a genus of giant flightless predatory birds that lived in Patagonia, containing the single species P. longissimus, living during the mid-Miocene.
So, therefore, we now know it is doubtful humans and Terror Birds ever lived at the same time. Titanis walleri, the only member of its genus, lived approximately two million years ago in North America, found thusfar from fossils in Florida and Texas. It was thought that the species did not become extinct until 15,000 years ago, but with this more precise dating by McFadden, it seems that Titanis became extinct at least 2 million years ago. Titanis was part of the group of giant flightless birds called Phorusrhacidae, which are nicknamed “terror birds”, and represents the youngest species of the lineage.
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Fossil remains of Titanis are so scanty that I don’t think we can really determine when they became extinct so don’t give up hope yet.
And we still have Conan Doyle’s ‘Aepyornis Island’ even if Verne is proven wrong.
Whew. The lead-in on the main page had me worried.
But great post. Thanks.
Jules Verne’s books were the gateways to my interest in cryptozoology. Remember the Bigfoot creature in Journey to the Center of the Earth? What a farsighted and splendid writer of his time.
One of my favorite movies with the classic Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation. As a kid the giant creatures seemed real and to find out later in life they were, i.e. Terror Birds. Great post!
I recently viewed a show that indicated that the giant sloth lived currently with humans in Patagonia and may still exist in remote parts of South America. Maybe these terror birds might also live on.
And I also wonder if they were really all that terrible? People have a habit of looking at skulls and making some rather exaggerated claims about the creature’s life based on very little evidence.
Megatherium did indeed live during the Pleistocene and probably encountered humans. So did some of the teratorns, also nicknamed terror birds by some.
Fantastic post. Loved it.
I’ve never seen photos of the Terror Bird skeletons before. They gave me quite a surprise. There is no doubt in my mind that Miyazaki based his horseclaw designs in “Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa” on them. In that manga (comic) the horseclaws are trained mounts used in battle. If Terror Birds had indeed been around with man, I wonder if any attempts were made to domesticate them in a similar fashion or if man was too busy planning on how to eat them.
At the time, man was probably more concerned with not being eaten by THEM!
Wasn’t the Giant Moa a “Terror Bird”? It seems to be about the same size as the birds described here. It survived up until a few hundred years ago and a few may have clinged to survival as late as into the early 19th century. Indeed, one of the much smaller species, at least, may still exist today.
Moas are completely unrelated, I’m afraid. They had tiny beaks, tiny heads, and much longer and slender necks by comparison. Moas may still exist, as now and again reports of them do surface, including (I believe) a sort of “blob-Moa” picture within recent decades.
The term “Terror Bird” has always troubled me, mainly because I’ve always associated it with ther Teratornids, because that’s roughly what that would translate to. I would have thought that scientists would no better in nicknaming one group of animals a term used for another group of animals- and both of them birds to boot! And at the time, “Demon Duck of Doom” wasn’t yet taken…