Don't forget about me

Llallawavis scagliai, the recently published terror bird breaking the record for being the most complete Phorusracid yet found: with being more than 90% complete it's a really nice fossil. It's so complete a study has been done on its ears and showed us that this bird's hearing was below average for living birds. This indicates that he likely only made noise to communicate with its congeners or to find prey. 

Llallawavis was about 1,2 meter tall and had a weight of 18 kg. Not as big as his large cousins, but still a threat for smaller animals on the South American plains 3,5 million years ago.
By the way, although all the members of phorusracidae are extinct they still have living relatives: the seriemas, a group of South American birds that do look a lot like their forerunners (only smaller). They even have the enlarged claw on their second toe.


Refs used:
vertpaleo.org/PDFS/4f/4f773015…
www.netwise.com.br/tropical/ca…