Big bird terrorized South America

From Mesa, Ariz., at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

Researchers working in Argentina have discovered fossils that may represent the heftiest flightless bird to ever have roamed the planet.

The fragmentary remains—a nearly complete skull and a foot bone called a tarsometatarsus—belonged to a member of a group of flightless birds called the phorusrhacids, or terror birds.