Scientists have analyzed the most complete fossil uncovered to date of a large "terror bird."
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology said they were able to determine the bird's hearing tendencies by reconstructing its inner ear.
A flightless bird it may have been, the terror bird stood three meters tall and a large, imposing beak. The ear reconstruction also showed the bird to have had a deep voice and the capability to hear low frequencies.
"The mean hearing estimated for this terror bird was below the average for living birds," study lead author Federico Degrange, of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina, said in a press release. "This seems to indicate that Llallawavis may have had a narrow, low vocalization frequency range, presumably used for intraspecific acoustic communication or prey detection."
The skeleton was originally found on an Argentinian beach.
"The sea can actually take the fossil and destroy it in the sea. It's a nice place to work, but you have to be fast," Degrange told BBC News. "They evolved very unique forms, with huge skulls, huge beaks with hooks, and long hindlimbs.
"They lost their ability to fly and they developed very unusual predatory capabilities that were not present in any comparable animals."
Some 65 million years ago, a period after the extinction of the dinosaurs, "phorusrhacids" would have been at the top of the food chain in what is now South America.
"The discovery of this species reveals that terror birds were more diverse in the Pliocene than previously thought," Degrange said in the release. "It will allow us to review the hypothesis about the decline and extinction of this fascinating group of birds"
