A Phororhacoid bird from the Eocene of Africa

• Published in: Naturwissenschaften
• Main Authors: Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile, Tabuce, Rodolphe, Mahboubi, M'Hammed, Adaci, Mohammed, Bensalah, Mustapha
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon - Terre, Planètes, Environnement (LGL-TPE), École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon)-Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne (UJM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier (UMR ISEM), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Institut de recherche pour le développement IRD : UR226-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire de Paléontologie Stratigraphique et Paléoenvironnement, Université d'Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed Oran, Département des Sciences de la Terre - Laboratoire de recherche n°25, Université Aboubekr Belkaid - University of Belkaïd Abou Bekr Tlemcen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2011
• Subjects: Aves; Eocene; Algeria; South America; Paleobiogeography; Transatlantic dispersal; [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; South Atlantic Ocean
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00660994; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-011-0829-5

International audience The bird fossil record is globally scarce in Africa. The early Tertiary evolution of terrestrial birds is virtually unknown in that continent. Here, we report on a femur of a large terrestrial new genus discovered from the early or early middle Eocene (between similar to 52 and 46 Ma) of south-western Algeria. This femur shows all the morphological features of the Phororhacoidea, the so-called Terror Birds. Most of the phororhacoids were indeed large, or even gigantic, flightless predators or scavengers with no close modern analogs. It is likely that this extinct group originated in South America, where they are known from the late Paleocene to the late Pleistocene (similar to 59 to 0.01 Ma). The presence of a phororhacoid bird in Africa cannot be explained by a vicariant mechanism because these birds first appeared in South America well after the onset of the mid-Cretaceous Gondwana break up (similar to 100 million years old). Here, we propose two hypotheses to account for this occurrence, either an early dispersal of small members of this group, which were still able of a limited flight, or a transoceanic migration of flightless birds from South America to Africa during the Paleocene or earliest Eocene. Paleogeographic reconstructions of the South Atlantic Ocean suggest the existence of several islands of considerable size between South America and Africa during the early Tertiary, which could have helped a transatlantic dispersal of phororhacoids