Phorusrhacinae

FunkMonk · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- PhorusrhacidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Phorusrhacidae
Time the record covers
At least 18 million years on record.
The record covers at least 21 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 29 Mya to 774 ka.
29 occurrences of Phorusrhacinae on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
29 occurrences- Oligocene3%
- Miocene80%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene13%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
7 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation18
- Monte Leon Formation2
- Solimões Formation1
- Raigón Formation1
- Deseado Formation1
- Cerro Boleadoras Formation · Río Zeballos Group1
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The named rock units Phorusrhacinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Phorusrhacinae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Phorusrhacinae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
307 taxa- Phorusrhacos longissimus9 sites
- Palaeothentes intermedius5 sites
- Palaeothentes lemoinei5 sites
- Patagornis marshi5 sites
- Prozaedyus proximus5 sites
- Psilopterus lemoinei5 sites
- Sipalocyon gracilis5 sites
- Acarechimys minutus4 sites
- Acdestis oweni4 sites
- Borhyaena tuberata4 sites
- Cladosictis patagonica4 sites
- Microbiotherium tehuelchum4 sites
- Propalaehoplophoridae4 sites
- Stenotatus4 sites
- Titanis walleri4 sites
- Abderites meridionalis3 sites
- Acarechimys minutissimus3 sites
- Acyon tricuspidatus3 sites
- Adinotherium3 sites
- Arctodictis munizi3 sites
- Eucholoeops ingens3 sites
- Hegetotherium mirabile3 sites
- Homunculus patagonicus3 sites
- Interatherium3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Phorusrhacinae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
15 references- Catálogo de los pájaros fósiles de la República Argentina conservados en el Museo de La Plata [Catalogue of the fossil birds from the Argentine Republic housed in the Museo de La Plata]10
- New skull remains of Phorusrhacos longissimus (Aves, Cariamiformes) from the Miocene of Argentina: implications for the morphology of Phorusrhacidae2
- Tertiary ground birds from Patagonia (Argentina) in the Tournouër collection of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris2
- A baseline paleoecological study of the Santa Cruz Formation (late-early Miocene) at the Atlantic coast of Patagonia, Argentina2
- Titanis walleri: Bones of contention2
- Systematic revision of the Phorusrhacidae (Avies: Ralliformes)2
- A gigantic new terror bird (Cariamiformes, Phorusrhacidae) from Middle Miocene tropical environments of La Venta in northern South America1
- Fossil vertebrates of the early-middle Miocene Cerro Boleadoras Formation, northwestern Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina1
- A reassessment of the giant birds Liornis floweri Ameghino, 1895 and Callornis giganteus Ameghino, 1895, from the Santacrucian (late Early Miocene) of Argentina1
- Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the coastal Monte Leon and Santa Cruz formations (Early Miocene) at Rincon del Buque, Southern Patagonia: A revisited locality1
- Anatomia craniana de Neoepiblema ambrosettianus (Ameghino, 1889)(Rodentia, Caviomorpha, Neoepiblemidae) do Mioceno Superior–Plioceno, estado do Acre, e revisao das especies do genero1
- The youngest large carnassial bird (Phorusrhacidae, Phorusrhacinae) from South America (Pliocene–Early Pleistocene of Uruguay)1
Each of the 29 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 3 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Phorusrhacinae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- FunkMonk
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Phorusrhacinae was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPhorusrhacidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ameghino 1899