Ancient Animals: Terror Bird by Sarah L. Thomson (review)

"A large one could be as tall as a basketball hoop. It could swallow a dog in one gulp. No bird has ever been bigger." Meet the terror birds, flightless apex predators that once feasted on their Cenozoic neighbors in South America and now posthumously delight primary students cutting their own teeth on easy readers. This debut entry in a new Ancient Animals series mainly highlights size and predation, with a nod to migration to North America, relegating even the name of the featured bird, Kelenken guillermoi, to a sentence on the title page verso. No mention is made of the fossil discoveries that inform our understanding of terror birds, an omission that fans of extinct beasties are sure to notice. There is, however, lots of menace and carrion in Plant's paintings, and fine print labels are frequently included to indicate examples of terror birds' prey. A half-dozen flightless birds, both extant and extinct, are featured with brief bullet-pointed data, and although they are not drawn to a common scale, they do offer points of comparison with the terror bird. A bibliography of books, videos, and websites is also included.