Excerpt From My Book--the Terror Bird

[MarkGelbart]

I'm getting close to finishing the first draft of my book--Georgia Before People: Land of the saber-tooths, mastodons, vampire bats, and other strange creatures. I've been working on my end notes and bibliography--pretty tedious stuff. Now, I have to go back and actually look up and write down the references for the information I put in my book.

Soon, I'm going to put the finishing touches on my book query and begin submitting it to publishers and agents--another tedious project.

Anyway, I'm putting an excerpt from my book on this thread. Most of my book focuses on the Pleistocene ecology of southeastern North America, but I decided to include a chapter called "Before the Pleistocene." Originally, I planned this chapter as an afterthought, but I believe it's turned out to be one of the best chapters in the book. I included the terror bird in the chapter "Before the Pleistocene," even though it didn't become extinct until about the middle of that era. It was likely more common during the Pliocene.

###

The Terror Bird--Titanis walleri

A herd of horses browse the low bushes dotting the warm savannah of three million years ago, somewhere near what's now Columbus, Georgia. In silence and without warning, a six-foot tall velociraptor bursts between two brushy short trees, races out of the shadows, and blindsides a mother and colt. Startled, the mother horse manages to change directions, its muscles rippling as it stampedes away, clods of grass and mud flying behind its hooves. But the skinny colt is too slow, the monstrous dinosaur knocks it down, ripping a gash in the colt's side with its talon. The dinosaur's short but solid arms, bare of feathers and scaly, hold the colt down, and the baby horse neighs in terror, kicks in desperation. The dinosaur's hooked, two-foot long beak tears into hide and flesh, and the colt's struggles cease, its eyes glaze over in shock. But wait a minute...dinosaurs became extinct millions of years before horses evolved. How can this scene be?

It's a case of misidentification--the velociraptor is actually the terror bird, a dominant predator from South America that colonized North America after a land bridge formed between the two continents (3). Although the difference between velociraptors and birds is murky--most scientists think the latter evolved from the former--there's one obvious distinction in this case: the terror bird had no teeth. Instead, it used its thick bill to tear at prey. Also, it had no tail, but had tail feathers less efficient in helping it change direction. Nevertheless, it could run at speeds up to fifty miles per hour, like a modern day ostrich, but unlike that herbivorous avian, the terror bird ate meat, swallowing rodents and rabbits whole, and regularly hunting juvenile horses, peccaries, and even the pronghorn antelopes that pranced the plains of southeastern North America during this time period.

Originally, terror birds evolved in South America where they successfully competed with the marsupial carnivores that lived there, but for awhile they held their own against the placental carnivores of North America as well, probably because of their size. At six-feet tall, three-hundred-fifty pounds, and with four inch claws, they were a formidable creature, easily capable of killing an unarmed man, if man had shared their environment. Their necks were long but thick. Unlike all other modern birds, their bones were solid, not hollow. Of course, with heavy bones like this, they couldn't fly. Paleontologists used to confuse terror bird bones with those of mammals because of this unusual bone structure. Their small arms were short and strong and stiff with a sharp claw on the end. The arms held prey down and were probably free of feathers. The terror bird had re-evolved in a kind of convergence with its velociraptor ancestors. Incidentally, scientists today think it's unlikely humans will ever be able to clone dinosaurs as depicted in the movie, Jurassic Park, but it's possible they can genetically re-engineer them from modern day birds.

The terror bird hunted North America from about three million years to one million years ago. The cause of their extinction is unknown, but I speculate may have been competition with wolves and some new defensive adapatations that evolved among placental prey species. Bears and raccoons may have taken a heavy toll on eggs. No terror bird fossils have been recovered in Georgia yet, but many have been found in north Florida rivers where the fossil record is more complete, and in Texas, so undoubtedly this big bird lived in Georgia. One specimen in Texas was thought to maybe date to only twelve-thousand years ago, but Dr. Bruce Macfadden (using an interesting method I discuss in my end notes) determined it was a million years older than that and as far as modern science knows, the terror bird's been extinct for at least that long (4).

Sources from my end notes.

(3) Zimmer Carl

"Terror Take Two."

Discover Magazine Volume 18 (6) June 1997

(4) Macfadden, Bruce; Kochstein, Jo Anne; Hulbert, Richard; Baskin, Jon

"Revised Age of the Late Neogene terror bird (Titanis) in North America during the Great American Interchange."

Geology 35 (2) February 2007 pp. 123-126

I haven't written up my explanation of the method scientists used to determine the terror bird specimens recovered dated to more than one million years ago. The article written by Bruce Macfadden et. al. is available online but I don't remember the website. The method they used is interesting. They compared ratios of rare earth elements in specimens of fossils they knew to be from the Pleistocene, with other specimens of species they knew were from the Pliocene. There are certain rare earth elements present in ground water. The scientists aren't kidding when they call these elements rare--I took a year of college chemistry, and never heard of any of them, but sure enough I looked in my old college chemistry textbook, and they do exist.

Apparently, the ratio of these rare earth elements changes over time. The ratio of rare earth elements from Pliocene species differs from the ratio of rare earth elements present in Pleistocene species. The terror bird bones had the ratio of rare earth elements found in the Pliocene species, and therefore the scientists determined the terror bird bones were from that older time period.

[tuscarora-th]

Congratulations on the progress of your book. Though I have no experience with writing a book, I do find your experience very exciting and look forward to future updates. Thanks for sharing.

Mike

[Harry Pristis]

Thanks for sharing, Mark. You must want comments on your work, or you wouldn't have posted it here.

I hope you find yourself a good editor. Your use of language tends toward the prosaic, hackneyed, one might say. This example is not a colorful word-picture. The narrative does not conjure up a frightful image of Titanis walleri. The confusion with Velociraptor is clumsy. Your old high school English teacher would be brutally red-penciling this submission, I think.

Fantasy is easy. Scientific exposition is easy. Combining the two is a challenge. I admire your ambition.

[mommabetts]

Your book sounds very interesting, please keep us posted as to your progress on it.

[ShadowElite951]

It's interesting material, I can't say I lost focus reading it. However, it was difficult to picture an image of the scene you proposed. The comparison of velociraptors and terrorbirds is a good, original idea but I think it can be executed a little better. Adding crisp sensory details has always helped me satisfy picky professors. But I suck at being an editor. Good luck with your book. Seems like a book I'd purchase and read in the future.

And if you need pretty illustrations I can help.

[JohnJ]

Mark, you're doing something some of us just talk about. The feedback you can get here is invaluable.

Take the time to achieve the impact and imagery you desire. You probably already know when you "nail it"; just as you know when it seems "prosaic". Please share this, or other, chapters after the next round of tuning. You know there is a market here, if you get it right. I'd like to see you succeed.

[Carl O'Cles]

Nice claw core you got there

[Auspex]

Nice claw core you got there

Every time Harry posts that thing, I have to get the drool-bucket out....

(Any piece of T. walleri is on my dream-list, and a claw core is just a step behind a skull).

[MarkGelbart]

I posted this excerpt for people to enjoy, not necessarily for literary criticism. If I wanted literary criticism, I would've posted this at www.absolutewrite.com where the criticism is particularly vicious but sometimes helpful.

However, if anyone feels compelled to criticize my piece, the criticism should at least be helpful.

Saying something stinks (or is uninteresting, commonplace, and clumsy as Harry Pristis put it) without giving specific examples of why, doesn't really help.

[tracer]

I enjoyed reading it, and I have also enjoyed when other people have posted their artwork, photography, information and thoughts on here. i am always cognizant of the amount of effort and determination it takes to achieve what many have done. it amazes me. and, with the world the way it is, it takes a degree of courage for people to put their work, their feelings, and/or their treasures out there on stage.

i am constantly reminded of my gratitude to those who present me with a world of information and entertainment that i had no access to for the first several decades of my life.

<doffing cap and echinoids to the creative ones>

[Harry Pristis]

I posted this excerpt for people to enjoy, not necessarily for literary criticism. If I wanted literary criticism, I would've posted this at www.absolutewrite.com where the criticism is particularly vicious but sometimes helpful.

However, if anyone feels compelled to criticize my piece, the criticism should at least be helpful.

Saying something stinks (or is uninteresting, commonplace, and clumsy as Harry Pristis put it) without giving specific examples of why, doesn't really help.

Editing is a paid profession, Mark. If you can get literary criticism at absolutewrite.com, you should take advantage of it.

Here's a freebie . . . The subject of the submission is the bird. There is too much attention paid to the horses in the crucial opening paragraph with "muscles rippling" and "neighs in terror" and "desperation" and "eyes glaze over in shock."

If you want to make an opening para about the horses, then do so. Talk about the stallion standing guard a few meters away, the terrier-size foal bumping his mother's belly for a meal, set a tranquil scene with a giant armadillo snacking on road apples across the meadow (that's a coprophage joke). Set the scene, describe the park and describe the horses.

(A "mother horse" is female, and a feminine pronoun, "her muscles rippling" is not inappropriate. You should know that a "colt" is a male foal so that you can describe "his" travails with the bird.)

Then, you might re-describe the scene from the hidden observer's point of view . . . how he's blended into the scenery, his green feathers matching the shrubby ecotone . . . how still he stands, betrayed only by a quiver of great yellow pupils and a tightening clench of claw in leaf litter. Build tension.

Set up a scene that lulls the reader . . . just another picnic in the park. Then . . . Wham! I don't think you need to get into the foal's terror, desperation, and shock. You can tone this down, the event is dramatic enough without getting into the foal's head.

It is the classic set-up for many scary movies and books. Hope this helps.

[Hawkeye]

Mark,

Being a new Georgian, I am very much looking forward to your book. I admire your gumption. Part of my job is writing scientific papers, but I cannot write prose to save my life, and I've tried. Mine is as dry as my scientific papers!

I found what you wrote to be very interesting. What is the target group for your book?

I hope you can get it to an editor and get it out soon, it looks like a very interesting read. Could you post a couple paragraphs from one of the more technical sections for us as well? I'd love to read another section to see what the other parts of the book look like (that's a poor attempt at a getting a free sneak preview ).

Thanks for posting, I hope to meet you at a book signing somewhere in Georgia!

[MarkGelbart]

Thanks Harry, I think I will add more description of the terror bird in there.

Hawkeye,

My target audience is readers of National Geographic, Natural History, and Discover magazines, along with people who've read books like Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe by R. Dale Guthrie, Twilight of the Mammoths by Paul Martin, and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

My goal is to get the book into every library in the state of Georgia.

I'd be happy to post another excerpt when I have time.

Here's a brief outline:

I take four imaginary trips in an invisible suit to 20,000 years BP, 130,000 years BP, 46,000 years BP, and 13,000 years BP and describe the landscapes, flora, and fauna that I encounter. The invisiblity protects me from the dangerous animals that live during this time period. I run into a problem on one of the trips because my suit malfunctions and I'm visible and unable to return to the present for a while.

I intersperse these imaginary trips with discussions of:

1. Causes and triggers of the ice ages

2. Plant and pollen fossil sites in Georgia and the southeast

3. Every vertebrate fossil site in Georgia and some in the surrounding states

4. A Pleistocene Zoo, a chapter in which I cover every large mammal species and many of the small ones that lived within the state over the past 2 million years

5. Pleistocene ecology of Georgia

6. The megafauna extinction controversy

7. Who were the first people to live in what's now Georgia, including a list of Clovis and pre-Clovis sites

8. Before the Pleistocene, including a pre-Pleistocene zoo. I cover Miocene, Eocene, and Cretaceous animals formerly found in the region.

9. Answers are not in Genesis--I use information from Georgia's natural history to debunk the creationist Answers-in-Genesis propaganda.

10. Global Warming and how scientists have difficulty distinguishing between natural change and anthropogenic change.

11. Let's Go There--a whimsical look at how I would live in a castle I built 36,000 years ago in central Georgia.

Most of the book is already researched and written, but of course, I'm continuously revising it. I still have trips planned to the Georgia College museum (this Wednesday), the Topper archaeological site, grassy balds in the Appalachian mountains (a relic Pleistocene ecosystem) Carolina Bays, and maybe Kingston Saltpeter Cave.

Hopefully, I'll be able to prospect for fossils on Little Kettle Creek in Wilkes County. Most of these trips are for photos, though it would be interesting, if I could actually locate some fossils myself at the latter site.

[Auspex]

Very imaginitative premise; sounds like a rollicking good adventure!

I like that in a book

[Hawkeye]

Sounds pretty cool. I look forward to it. Any time you can use historical fiction to educate the masses, we all win.

[trilo-biker]

nicely written i am writing breif summary of the cenoizoic land scape and animals of washington for a school report I mite post some ouf it after it is graded