Age of 7-foot-tall 'terror bird' revised

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Jan. 23 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests a prehistoric 7-foot-tall "terror bird" arrived in North America from South America about 5 million years ago.

University of Florida paleontologist Bruce MacFadden and colleagues used a geochemical technique to revise the ages of Titanis walleri fossils discovered in Texas and Florida. Those are the only places in North America where the species has been found.

"It was previously thought Titanis immigrated to Texas across the Panamanian land bridge that formed about 3 million years ago connecting North and South America," said MacFadden. "This shows the bird arrived 2 million years before the land bridge formed, probably across islands that formed what today is the Isthmus of Panama."

MacFadden said the terror birds were carnivorous, weighed about 330 pounds, had powerful feet and a head larger than a man's.

Co-authors of the study include Richard Hulbert Jr. of the Florida Museum of Natural History; Joann Labs-Hochstein, who at the time of the study was one of MacFadden's postdoctoral students, and Jon Baskin of Texas A&M University.

The study appears in the online version of the journal Geology and is to be featured in its February print edition.