Early humans could never have come into contact with the giant carnivorous "terror bird" Titanis walleri, research suggests.
It had been thought the fearsome beasts became extinct as little as 10,000 years ago - a time when humans shared their North American habitat.
But a US team has now revised this date to about two million years earlier.
The truly depressing thing is that they could have said three summers ago and we all would have just nodded our heads in wonder.
3 comments:
A factor of 200 could not be described as a margin of error; in engineering it would either be incompetence or gross negligence. It makes me wonder how many other accepted dates are so incorrect.
Then there is the problem of how a breeding population of non-flying birds managed to get from South to North America before they were connected.
Finally, how is it that the top predator of the time became extinct? Selection to extinction would seem to be an important component of evolutionary theory, yet it remains largely unexplained.
Peter, you've been missed. This post made me laugh so much I'm glad I invoked my no-coffee-drinking while online rule.
200 or 2,000,000 -- no problema.
We were spared this time.
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