Re: Re-emergence of lost features.

[chris brochu <cbrochu@fmppr.fmnh.org>]

>
>If anyone has the reference to any phorusrhacid papers I for one would be
>interested. Thanks to Thom. Holtz and Chris Brochu for pointing out that
>some  phorusrhacids were rather recent. I was being confused by a picture
>(I think by  Greg Paul or uncle Bob) of a similar sort of bird holding a
>horse up in the air  in its beak and waving it around - a very early horse
>of course! - and that WAS  a very early tertiary bird.


Sounds like you saw a picture of a diatrymid  - a different lineage that
filled the same gestalt as Phorusrhachidae independently.  They're known
from the Eocene of North America and Europe in the Eocene, and are (last I
heard) related to cranes.

There's also a possible phorusrhachid from the Eocene Messel locality of
Germany, but I don't know if it's been looked at recently.

What's neat (to me, a croc specialist) is that big terrestrial killer birds
almost always appear coevally with putatively terrestrial crocodyliforms.
Phorusrhachids are found in association with "sebecosuchians" (the North
American Pleistocene occurrences are an exception), and diatrymids appear
in association with pristichampsine crocodylians.



chris


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Christopher Brochu, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Department of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History
Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road
Chicago, IL  60605  USA

phone:  312-922-9410, ext. 469
fax:  312-922-9566

cbrochu@fmppr.fmnh.org