PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to to.pbs.org/DonateEons
↓ More info below ↓
About 5 million years ago, a new predator made its way from the south and onto the coastal plains of North America. It was a giant, flightless, carnivorous bird and came to be known by one of the coolest and most richly earned nicknames in all of paleontology: the terror bird.
Correction! Thanks to Ben Creisler for pointing out that at 4:10, we mixed up the Paleogene Period with the Neogene Period. We regret the error and hope you still find these birds as terrifying as we do.
Thanks to Julio Lacerda and Studio 252mya for the Titanis illustration. You can find more of Julio's work here: 252mya.com/gallery/julio-lacerda
Produced for PBS Digital Studios.
Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet?
Facebook - / eonsshow
Twitter - / eonsshow
Instagram - / eonsshow
References:
advances.sciencemag.org/conten...
www.britannica.com/place/Gond...
www.bbc.com/earth/story/201507...
www.sciencemag.org/news/2006/1...
www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/0...
hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton...
www.livescience.com/40311-ple...
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/flo...
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/na...
neotropical.birds.cornell.edu...
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOT...
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fil...
www.jstor.org/stable/40035724
www.bio-nica.info/Biblioteca/M...
www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2494...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/d...
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or...
news.nationalgeographic.com/n...
You were killed by a Lvl.150 Terror bird
ARK
Is Ark similar to The Stomping Lands game?
yes, kinda, but the stomping lands is dead and no longer exists.
pffft, trust me, when the new tlc pass arrives, im sure the terror bird will be amazing, and will even look better!
Followed by "Your Lvl 238 Otter was killed by a Lvl 150 Terror Bird" ;_;
Sometimes, as I’m being chased by furious geese, I wonder if terror birds ever truly left us
🇨🇦
Jeez, geese!
Flamingos think they have inherited the role.
They look kinda like emus
😂 He looks about five years younger.
I love how the title implies it was recent history. 1: remember when the terror birds invaded? 2: yeah, junior year was wild
Hilarious
Slow clap
XD
I mean, for Australians it is
@ exactly
This guy: mentions terror birds. Ark players: *ptsd intensifies*
Terror Bird=Lose your Stuff
@@neko_potato terror bird = oversized dod
And when its not terror birds its probably Ichthyornis
The sole reason I generally avoid the boreal forest biomes.
Gotta love how popular these are for being vicious and scary killers - but put even a single feather on a raptor or t.rex and they're instantly "too fluffy and cute to be taken seriously"...
We can blame Hollywood for that.
@@@XMIR10C Well, to be perfectly accurate they had proto-feathers. Not hooked into a plane like most modern feathers, but fluff for keeping warm etc. Like ostriches! And if you find Chinese variations of T-Rex with feathers then the American ones almost certainly had them too. All I need really is a sauropod with feathers and I'll be happy. Man, I can't wait for the first movie to just go all out with this, after nearly a century of drably colored reptiles posing as dinosaurs in every movie. The more wrong paleontologists can make JP the better it is. Always hated that movie. Personally I think Steven Spielberg should receive a lifetime ban from making any movies with animals in them at all. Dude is clueless.
@@politicallycorrectredskin796 They had bones of the archaeopteryx. They had at least some idea that at least coelosaurian therapods had feathers. What did they do? Made them emaciated and scaly. I for one think raptors looked awesome with feathers, the way they slicked back and looked like they could cut you. JP is a cinematic masterpiece, but their dinosaur adaptations are a crime against humanity.
Fishslap 33 To be fair, evidence was less solid at the time, and the plot for the movie was that they were specifically modified to be more... “entertaining” to the public eye. So, more dragon like: no feathers, big teeth, you get the drill
@@politicallycorrectredskin796 That 'dude' made millions of dollars and entertained millions of people for decades. He can't be completely 'clueless', can he?
Scorched Earth be like “Everywhere i go, i see his face..”
Scorched Earth: Wild Dinos DMG: 99999999 Tamed Dinos DMG: 0,0005
THEGOLOMYT lol
went looking for an Ark related comment. was not disappointed
Coincidentally I’m on scorched right now
@@miloxr8815 same lol
"I fear no man" "But that thing" *Level 150 TerrorBird* "It scares me."
Are posseums the only South American animal that successfully migrated north and survive?
@@user-lq4ct6dr5m Armadillos come from South America
Terror birds look like theropods trying to stage a comeback.
We birds are theropods
No need for a comeback, considering therapods are the only existing dinosaurs (birds)😊
@@thespookyvaginosisnut5984 and also you birds cost 2 dollars at KFC 😂
@@doomslayerex5886 Instead is dominating all over the world
@@junholee4961 ok
Dinosaurs didn't give up quickly, just look at these guys.
The Coolest Jedi Porg Cooking some right now.
KhaanMan66 lol.
Yeah these terror birds remind me forcibly of tyrannosauridae.
The way I see it, terror birds were dinosaurs that took over from the likes of Velociraptor and other meat eating theropods. The legs and feet alone are proof enough it was a dinosaur even if it itsn't explicitly called a dinosaur. But since it was one of the birds that are classified as Aves, and with the fact that all birds today are dinosaurs in mind, I consider the terror bird to be one as well.
@Cuzeg Spiked birds existed long before tyranosaurus rex, and long before tyranosauridea family. This group of dinosaurs is one of the earliest.
Basically a more murderous Emu Noice.
An emu with an eagle’s head
An Emudward Dagger Talons
...or Cassowary...
*even more murderous Emu
I....i like your profile pic.CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE
Lvl 1 dodo Lvl 10 velciraptor Lvl 50 Sinosinthosaurus Lvl100 TERROR BIRD
Velciraptor?lmao
@@tombrown3355 The real Velociraptors are small... very small
Rommel Daniel Vidal Sotto depends which variation of them
@@tombrown3355 Nah, the ones in Jurassic Park are actually Deinonychus, but Velociraptor just sounded cooler, so they went with that. Real Velociraptors were about the size of a mid sized dog.
Level 1000 dodorex
The closest living relative to the terror bird is known as the seriema, it's pretty common in parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, and it has a crazy raptor-like claw in it's feet it uses to catch small animals, their singing can be listened more than 1km of distance!
How interesting! Thanks for the tip.
To hunt one would b cool or just spot it
"Which is not how I want to go!" Bout as scientific as I can get watching murder birds
Still better than cancer in my opinion.
Hey, I'd take that over the diease that turns your torn muscle into solid bone. Seriously, that is my nightmare fuel.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Terror Bird's biggest flaw when dealing with the new North American predators; it's huge eggs it laid on the ground that were very vulnerable to attack.
MRDLT00 I assume there were scavengers in South America as well?
Thank god for that !!
It was probably more the climate change causing colder temps the birds didn't like, and also causing floral turnover causing prey extinctions. Competition during stressful times could also have impacted them. Also, Harris's hawks hunt cooperatively.
Actually for its big size it laid tiny eggs the size of those of a hummingbird.
Benjamin Franklin I’ve written longer
Lvl. 1 Pigeon Lvl. 100 Terror bird That's how mafia works.
Level 250 Therizino Mafia Boss
Level 1,000 Giganotosaurus MAFIA BOSS
Level 1 Dilo M A F I A O V E R L O R D
level 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dodo bird
Level ♾ That one pigeon that fought that one stray cat over a piece of Hot Dog on the street and won
Yeah it’s a pain when you run out of stam in the red woods and they come swarm you...
Jaydenn especially when you try to get to red ob on ragnarok because blue ob has 83 million turrets on it
Drake Alone dude that’s so tru
Raptors are worse. Jump and take you off your mount
Ore if youre Taming a 145 thylacoleo and they come to say hello
@@meows8432 what game are you talking about?
I love terror birds. I remember reading about them as a child. The artist impression illustrations were so weird and yet so cool. It is amazing to think such birds once existed.
CASSOWARY.
@@lindanorris2455 i never want to meet a cassowary face to face dont get me wrong but the modern day 5 foot 130lb cassowaries got nothing on these 10 foot terror birds that weighed the same as a bear with hawk beaks
Haha I remember the terror bird from when I played Ark: Survival Evolved. Good times!
Quasiker I still do play ark, useless creature
Malformedvirus5 Xbox Bro i raided The last Alpha Tribe on Official With Terrorbirds Lvl 34 💪
Starbrotass That was not an Alpha tribe
Starbrotass only 34? Not an alpha tribe .
Im still crying :(
“Which is not how I want to go.” 🤣😂
TenThumbs Productions He says that a lot... :-)
Death by shithawk 😱
Make that into a shirt!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Totally underated KZhead channel. Providing so much valuable information about our history for free. Love you guys!
"Ark: Survival Evolved" has instilled in me a deep burning hatred for these oversized murder chickens. They're interesting to learn about though.
I here you bud
Once, I had just spawned in and after less than a second a pack of terror birds instantly killed me. I then spawned in again, and the same thing happened.
Eons is killing it with these great videos. Don't stop.
95% of the show when they are talking about predators is " that's not how I want to go"
Shoutout to the show Prehistoric Park for teaching me about this well before i first played ARK
Please do a video on the tetrapods that existed before the dinosaurs!! The early diapsids and synapsids and all those.
Seconded!
One more vote here!
Yes!!
Underrated.
binky2819 Yesssss!!!
More on the Great American Biotic Interchange, PLEASE!!!! This rocks!
I remember reading about terror birds as a young kid and being fascinated by how they could hunt down mustangs, as well as their impressive beak
"That time terror birds invaded" Australia: *ptsd noises*
Another splendid video! PBS eons making youtube a better place one video at a time!
Dodo Bird you seem more than a little bit biased extinct bird!
Dodo Bird nice to see you here.I thought you went extinct
I thought y'all went extinct...
Give me more dodo kibble please.
Pbs does best when it does not engage in political nonsense. In all it's programming.
I love the terror birds! I saw one at the field museum exactly a week ago. Thanks!
Was it dead?
geph c ha! Fortunately yes! She appears in my video. She was also a smaller one.
Cool!
I saw one in my local duck pond the other week. It had disguised itself as a Canadian goose, but I knew its game.
Egypt Guy You may saw secretary bird, which kinda looks like smaller terror bird
*choboco theme playing as you’re quickly disemboweled* 🐤kweh!
Chowe Chowe cubos chocoballuru...
or flattened by a meteor burning hatred for choco meteor
Terror birds migrated to ragnorok lmao Ark reference
On the map I play on mobile they are on some beaches and in the red woods
I've been curious to learn more information about terror/killer birds ever since I was a child. It seems we dont know too much about them other than small tidbits. That being said, this video was very informative as an introduction to someone new to the paleontology scene.
MURDER-CHICKENS!!!
Man-eating chicken?
Anti KFC
Shhhh you’ll give Link nightmares
I wonder how they tasted.
Or, as sabretoothed cats called them: Mmm... chicken!
I literally thought thats a ark lets Play 💀
We ark players want to destroy all terror birds
THEGOLOMYT only people who live in redwoods agree
Beanos
Great episode! The host was more relaxed than he has been in previous eps. A lot of fun! Terrorific!
Tierzoo missed a huge opportunity in not mentioning these in his "Dinosaur-like builds" video.
Love that channel!
The reason they weren't mentioned is because, like dinosaurs, they have been patched out of the game.
I remember playing as a Terror Bird when the game was in beta. On Windows 3.1
culwin i remember back to when the game was a text adventure with a purple screen. get the eons reference? ;)
Praise TierZoo! He's the greatest!
In Brazil we make a lot of jokes about sariemas, you guys have no idea, like when someone is super tall and has skinny legs we call... Yep, sariemas and I found super fun to know that they are relatives to a super awesome predator
Not just one super awesome predator. A whole family of them
Nunca tinha ouvido falar nesse apelido.
@@pedrosabino8751 eu aprendi com a família da minha mãe, mas não conheço muita gente que usa isso onde moro, deve ser algo regional.
AN ENTIRE PBS CHANNEL I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT?? Looks like I have a lot of videos to catch up on
I’m pretty sure this was the first PBS Eons YT video I ever saw and then I subscribed. Yay
I like the fast pace of this video while keeping the story flowing well. Good job!
At LSU we had a $100 bet/reward for whoever could find a bone from T. Walleri in Louisiana. We knew of the fossils in Texas and Florida, but we had never found any as far as we knew. So if you're in Louisiana and you find a big hardy bird bone, let the folks at LSU know...there's a $100 waiting for you ;) Also, go mammals!
Travis Atwood ..LOL ! A measly hundred bucks for an exceptionally rare fossilized T. walleri bone from Louisiana ? You get the Paleo Buzzer award on that one. Next !
When I scramble eggs, I leave the window open, just so other birds can see what I am capable of.
Your comment was quite funny :D
Terror birds ARE dinosaurs.
Nope
Avian dinosaur, if you want to pedantic. Also known as birds.
@@austinshoupe3003 still in the same family tree
No I mean I guess birds r related to dinosaurs but not exactly dinosaurs
@@moneytree8963 No, they are literally dinosaurs.
So were all Terror birds lone hunters, or did some travel in packs?
Justin Trudeau Latin Kings
Well it could go either way. Some films see them as loners while others like WWB see them more as a mixture. Its all speculation at this point and looking at their modern relatives.
Birds of a terror flock togerror.
Whle most birds are solitary hunters there are some exceptions. For example the Harris Hawk. No telling which way terror birds would have gone.
This is a good point. If we look at their closest living relatives, seriemas definite forage alone. But that's because they do not necessarily scavenge a lot and they focuses mainly on small prey. But if we turn our attention to their second closest cousins, some falcons - basically the caracaras - do cooperate to take down their prey; parrots, on the other hand, are extremely social animals. My guess is that most of them are solitary hunters for the sake of being small-game hunters, but can be quite social at a carcass similar to vultures today.
Man, this channel was such an awesome find.
Excellent video thank you so much for sharing this incredible story
Wow! What a great, concise, engaging vid! I literally watch so many hours of content on youtube every day, but I usually only watch it at 2x. This I was happy to watch at normal speed haha great stuff!
This channel, these people.... you are all so beautiful. Thank you for making these and being here!:)
Cheers from wonderful Panama! Always lovely to see our map featured on content this great, keep up the good work!
these were my favourite creatures from the walking with beasts series. They are so fierce and sassy i love it
Ty, you were very informational and not a 20 minute video. Good work, I appreciate.
I learned about the beak tooth from TierZoo. Small hitbox, high crit rate.
i love the use of maps! thank you for that. it allows me to visualize the whole thing.
Very informative and entertaining, thank you.
60 million years ago! Are you sure about that, because I got killed by a level 150 terror bird yesterday
This is my favorite Scishow channel. More of these please!
Awesome as always. Oh, yeah, the Great American Biotic Interchange, one of the main reasons my home country Mexico ranks on the top 5 megadiverse countries on Earth, located right at the frontier between the Nearctic and Neotropical biogeographic regions!
The Terror Birds beak would be like a pick axe coming down on you!
I find this period of pre-history more fascinating than the time of the dinosaurs.
I would love to see a video about ancient animal migratory paths, not just the Americas but maybe the whole world, as a Series maybe?
Ditto, and for plants as well even though they usually have less eventful stories behind them that the animals. It's fascinating to see how various chance opportunities at different points in history led to the distribution of life, and then to the diversity of life when the specific chance opportunity ended and the now separated lines of the specie evolved to survive in different circumstances (or died trying).
I love these videos. Every time I see one in my feed I feel happy. But could you maybe speak a little slower please? I sometimes have trouble processing everything you say.
You bet Riana. Other people have been saying that too, so I've been trying to slow down, and we're beginning to edit the videos so the pace is a little more easygoing. It'sjustthatsometimesigetsoexcitedaboutthisstuffican'twaittotelleveryone! I hope you understand.
I love the speed! Perhaps listeners who want a slower pace could try 0.75. But personally, I think what you have now is a great pace. Once you get used to this speed, you adapt fairly quickly. OP should try this video at 0.75 and they will probably will like it. I tried it quickly and it's probably what they want.
If they make it slower then I’ll have to set the speed to 1.25. I found the pace perfect.
Maybe not necessarily speak slower but at least keeping the commas and periods to let viewers process every sentence! Speak at a pace that feels natural to you, as if you were speaking to a person instead of rushing through your teleprompter! Some studies suggest that the ideal pace for video lectures is between 200 and 250 words per minute. REF: Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014, March). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of mooc videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 41-50). ACM.
PBS Eons You’re so lovely! Thanks for doing what you do and making the rest of us excited about this stuff too ☺️
I wish we still had terror birds. I want more gigantic bird species. I'd also like a chocobo like bird that we can ride for longer than an ostrich
Brontornis are my favorites of the bunch because its massive beaks! Absolute beasts!
This channel is the best channel, thanks for the knowledge gang!
Imagine a tyrannosaur using its feet to kick it's pray to death. They're so closely related to birds, I can actually see them doing that.
Thank you for all the artwork of terror birds - it really helped me get an idea for how Axe Beaks would likely move. Not that I'm much of an artist. I've just got an idea in my head that I've got to try to get down on paper. lol
Dinosaurs were like, "An asteroid killed us off? How's a big...NOPE! We're BAAACK, with more feathers!"
I'd love to see a video about Ediacaran biota. Keep up the great work!
Can you do a video on prehistoric marsupials? Love this series!
"their time here was so short" still much longer than us tho x)
How have I missed these videos!? Subscriber!!
I would love to see an episode on discussing different processes of fossilization, including what actually happens at the molecular level!
Very passionate about educating. I love the vids. Thanks chief
"the Time terror birds invades" Me: oh no now there not just in the red woods
Great episode!
4:32 - whatever that sabertooth is doing, it looks...painful.
What’s up with it’s legs
It's doing a spin. I've seen lions do it too in documentaries.
That's amazing, I had never heard of these birds before!
What is that orchestra music in the background. It sounds really nice
I know it's a bit vain to admit, but I actually feel quite chuffed with myself that I spotted the time period mistake. Not in a smug way, at the presenter's expense. He's extremely wise and talented and eveyone makes mistakes sometimes. It's allowed. But I felt chuffed because it made me feel that I am learning from these videos, rather than just letting random images and sounds wash over me and never really taking anything in. So though the mistake appeared in this Eons clip, it's testimony to the quality of the whole rest of the Eons series that I had learned enough from them all to be able to spot it this time. It's like student catching their teacher out. A mixture of pride in oneself and huge gratitude to them for getting you to that point. Education is so sexy and empowering!
There was also an Australian Terror bird that existed 15 million years ago, Bullockornis planei. Otherwise known as 'The Demon Duck of Doom' or Thunderbird. Archeology in Australia has only really taken off in the last half century or so, and field trips have taken full advantage of the development of the beer esky and portable refrigeration. For further proof, there was the discovery of a 7 metre long extinct genus of snake in the riverleigh deposits related to the modern python. It was named Montypythonoides riverleighensis, or ...... ......... ......... The Monty Python.
Blake is my favourite narrator
Who the eff is Blake?
me! (BdeP)
rewer same
He speak to fast. It's hard to me follow him. I'm brazilian
geph c, he’s the person who speak thru the entire video. Not sure if you notice they always take turn to narrate.
Imagine being a cat with big teeth chilling and then a dinosaur comes running up on you and jumps you
Another great video!
Thank you, THANK YOU, for showing maps of the continents at the referenced time :)
Andre P agree. Evolution is always organism vs environment so having a geographic reference to the environmental parameters gives a lot of context.
LOVE YOUR VIDEOS, have you considered making one discussing examples of island gigantism and dwarfism in the fossil record?
We got one!
Considering the T-Rex and the Velociraptor were among the closest dinosaurian relatives to birds, we can say Phorursacidae/"terror birds" were just continuing a "family tradition": in many ways they were the closest birds to their "theropodian" roots.
I truly love PBS Eons, and am grateful for all you folks do. I have two small quibbles here, though. Somehow an extra "s" crept into the middle of your pronunciation of the obsolete term Phororhacos. It's like "Fo-Ro-Rackos". But what I really don't understand is the anatomy of the saber-toothed cat in the painting at 4:34. The body is supposedly falling, upside down, yet there's one hind limb depicted as if the back half of the animal were standing upright. I mean, cats are lithe, but not that much.
Hey eons! I love your videos and am really happy you are making content about the history of the earth. I would love to see a video on how transitional species might be good as an explanatory idea, but don't really exist in the real world. Keep up the great work!
How long will human civilization be detectable in the fossil record and how long would it have lasted if humanity had of just died out at different points in its development?
Angel Samael sounds like a great idea.
I think that all infrastructure (buildings, roads, vehicles, etc) will all have completely disappeared in a million years, but all the metals in those things would become embedded in the Earth's crust, which could be detected by intelligence beings in the far future. And given that there are more than 7.5 billion people alive today, certainly someones remains will become fossilized (we've found fossils of soft bodied animals from before the Cambrian explosion 542 million years ago). I'm afraid I don't understand the second part of your question.
I've heard somewhere that our most permanently visible trace in the geologic record will actually be all the plastic we produced.
vermeer grange 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
Most construction material - concrete, wood, brick - will vanish quite quickly in the fossil record. Metals may or may not depending on the geology/hydrology of the particular region - though whether archaeologists of the future would be able to tell they used to be part of civilization rather than just some weird ore deposits is unclear IMO. Buried plastics will last quite a long time though probably not millions of years - again the carbon-rich layers they leave may or may not be enough to identify an advanced civilization. There will definitely be human fossils but whether there will be enough to have a good chance at recovery millions of years in the future is unclear - sure there are 7.5 billion alive today but that has only been the case for a few decades, whereas most ancient fossil species we know of spanned hundreds of thousands to millions of years. All that said four results of human civilisation will definitely be detectable in the fossil record: 1) mass extinction & migration of species - the sudden spread of small cats, dogs, rats, horses, and certain plants around the world combined with the sudden disappearance of so many other species and rapid depletion of large fish species will definitely be noticeable in the fossil record long after we are gone. 2) Changes in plant diversity & distribution related to our massive agriculture system will be recorded in pollen traces in sediments in nearly every freshwater system on the planet. 3) nuclear power/weapons - accidents from nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons testing has significantly increased background radiation levels (though the magnitude is small) and nuclear testing sites will have detectable increases in radiation & radioactive material for millennia (though magnitude will be small). 4) increase in atmospheric CO2 will be recorded in sediments all over the world. As will the changes in ecosystems as a response to warming climate.
Can you teach the presenter from spacetime to be more energetic with his delivery? Love your work Eons
these videos bring me life
Very enjoyable video about post-KT extinction dinosaurs.
Very nice video :3 Completely new info here~
That Titanis made it for three million years in North America and only went extinct when the Ice Age kicked off is fairly impressive, honestly, especially when you consider what a different ecosystem it walked into.
Is it safe to assume more info on the American biotic interchange is available
*Looks at how terror birds appear; listens to how they probably hunted* Yeah, any doubts that birds are the descendents of dinosaurs should really evaporate after watching this video.
Just look at those big bastards. What an aptly named animal.
Professor Politics Look up the Shrike or Butcherbird...more proof.
Return of the dinosaurs,they must have been like,were back you basted lol
more videos on the american biotic exchange would be really interesting. great video thank!
And people say feathered Dinosaur are not intimidating...