The California falcon is just a shrimp, this is a giant bird in ancient North America

A huge wormhole suddenly appeared in the downtown area of ​​Los Angeles, engulfing many buildings and people, in fact it is a wormhole that can travel to the past. This is the plot of the American TV series La Brea (2021) which premiered on NBC on September 28, 2021. What attracted me the most from this series was not the plot, rather the attraction. It is the various ancient creatures that appear in it. The first appearance is not a saber-toothed tiger, but a giant scavenger bird.

La Brea is an American drama television series that premiered on NBC, the first episode of season 1 was released on September 28, 2021. The series is produced and directed by David Appelbaum.

The story is about a huge sinkhole that opened in the middle of Los Angeles causing hundreds of people, vehicles and buildings to fall. The survivors are trapped in a primeval land dating back to around 10,000 BC. When life was originally peaceful, the appearance of the sinkhole caused the family of 4 to be divided, the father tried to find a way to save his son and wife from the sinkhole but was not allowed by the Department of Homeland Security. United States territory.

Beneath the sinkhole, in order to survive and survive, people from strangers, carrying secrets that they don't want to let others know, form a support group that takes turns guarding and searching for food. eat. The animals of the last Ice Age appeared: the saber-toothed tiger, the giant ground sloth. were a threat to their first special survival.

More than 100 years ago, while paleontologists were cleaning up paleontological fossils in the La Brea - La Brea Tar Pits tar pit, paleontologist Loye H. Miller accidentally discovered fossil of a previously unknown giant bird. Then, in 1909, he named this giant bird Teratornis.

Loye Holmes Miller, is an American paleontologist and zoologist who has served as a professor of zoology at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis.

The Teratornis fossil was found in the La Brea tar pit. They are a genus of giant North American birds of prey.

This bird is said to be "giant" because it is indeed very large, with a wingspan of up to 4 meters, when standing on two feet on the ground they are about 80 cm tall, and weigh more than 15 kg. Listening to the numbers, many people may think they are not huge, but the largest bird that exists on Earth today - the albatross Diomedea exulans is not as large as the Teratornis. The largest known Diomedea exulans albatross also has a wingspan of about 3.5 meters, so it is not an exaggeration to say that this unusual bird is a "giant bird".

The bird closely related to Teratornis in modern times is the California vulture (Gymnogyps californianus), also known as the California falcon, which is the largest bird in North America today, with a wingspan of up to 3 meters. .

The California Falcon is a species of bird in the vulture family. Formerly widespread in mountainous areas of western North America. It is the largest modern bird in North America. It is found in northern Arizona and southern Utah, the coastal mountains of central and southern California, and northern Baja California.

Teratornis birds had large heads, hard horns, and beaks - well suited for biting prey, and today's raptors have a similar structure. Due to the unusually large head of this bird, it can swallow a rabbit in one bite. The bird Teratornis not only has a large and strong mouth, but its eyes are also very useful, it can clearly see ground targets from the air at great heights.

The skull of Teratornis.

The heads and necks of these birds may also be hairless, similar to vultures, which is characteristic of carrion birds. Its wings are wide and its hind limbs are also very strong. Paleontologists have discovered that despite its large body, this bird can jump and take off directly with its feet, instead of needing to run and take off like other large birds.

When the adult Teratornis wingspan, its wing surface can be up to 17.5 square meters, can fly in the air, very labor-saving.

Teratornis birds appeared more than 2 million years ago, and their fossils have been found in many places in the United States, including California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Among them is La Brea Tar Pits, which is considered to be the most discovered place - the number exceeds one hundred.

Why is there such a huge bird as the Teratornis bird in North America? The answer comes from the fact that there used to be a large number of giant mammals in North America, such as mammoths, mastodons, giant bison, etc., so the carcasses of these animals became a delicious meal for the birds of Teratornis. The lifestyle of this bird is likely similar to that of the African vultures on the African savannah today, when it discovers the carcass of a large animal, it will bring the flock to scare away other scavengers and then enjoy the foul-smelling flesh.

The Teratornis birds depend on large animals to survive, and when the large animals disappear, they will also gradually disappear because there is not enough food. More than 10,000 years ago, with the fusion of climate and human influence, most of the large animals in North America became extinct, which led to the extinction of this bird, so This bird's extinction time is actually very close to today.