Tooth-beak Revealed
How a zombie novel unveiled a very real monster who once lived in my own back yard.
Recently, during a rare bout of downtime, I was sitting under the pepper tree in my yard reading one of my guilty pleasures. It was a 99 cent short novel that I downloaded as an eBook titled “Zombie wake” (it is almost Halloween after all). This fast paced read is about a park ranger who find himself stuck on a pier facing a horde of the undead hell-bent on consuming his brain. There is a point in the story where a brown pelican figures prominently in the story and the author refers to the bird as “tooth-beak”. Now I am a big fan of both Pelicans and e-books. I really like carrying a library in the palm of my hand. However, one potential negative of the eBook reader (tablet pc, kindle, etc) is you have a web browser in the palm of your hand to. It makes for easy distraction. I found myself googling pelicans and digging deep into pelicaniforme biology. As I looked at images of the brown pelican like the one below:
I saw that they do in fact have a tooth on their beak! this lead me to type into my search bar “Tooth Beak”. The second result was enough to bring my 8-year-old obsession with the prehistoric out of remission and kick it into overdrive. You see, there was a bird from the past that was a true tooth beak! Its very name was derived from it. Osteodontornis. The bone toothed bird! I don’t know whether the author of “Zombie Wake” was aware of the pelicans impressive ancestor in his apparent homage to the toothed birds of yester-epic but the connection was made for me. As I read further I learned that this avian behemoth was the second largest flying bird in the known fossil record with a wingspan of 18+ feet. I went on to learn that much like its modern relative, this birds beak was so heavy that it most likely flew with its head tucked back between its shoulders. Stand on any bluff top in southern California and watch as a V of pelicans glides past you and you will see this very distinctive flight posture. Now imagine those birds having an 18 foot wings span and beak covered in needle like bony teeth.
If you really want to be entertained, find a group of 7-10 year olds and tell them about Mr. Osteodontornis. Then pace out that gargantuan wingspan for them so they can visualize the scale. then stand back and watch the show as they transform themselves in squawking monster birds.
My research continued. I learned that an almost complete Osteodontornis skeleton was found in a sandstone shale quarry near Santa Maria. Time for a hike. As I walked along the winding dirt fire road in the vicinity of said quarry, I began to take what I know about the prehistory of the Santa Barbara region and apply it to my imagination. I started to visualize the very different reality. A huge almost landlocked bay. Cold northern ocean water heavy laden with Diatoms gets pumped in through the narrow mouth of the bay providing a nutrient load for the prehistoric food pyramid. The thick biological soup is a feeding ground for all forms of life. Among the menagerie are the cephalopods. The “head feet”. They are the squids and their relatives. These soft almost gelatinous fast swimming Squid-critters must have been hard to catch. UNLESS! unless you have a 18 to 20 inch long bony bill festooned with the aforementioned needle teeth. Imagine our friend osteodontornis cruising along, mere feet above the water scanning for squid when suddenly it drops its head into the waves. As the bird turns and climbs up away from the waves we see a large wriggling cephalopod squirming in its beak impaled on the teeth tentacles writhing! mmmmmmm calamari anyone! So there you have it. Giant soaring monster birds cruising the Miocene sky. Now if I could just turn that into a Halloween costume….. I could probably get a rubber squid online…
