Duck! It's the Muhammad Ali of ancient predators

-Prehistoric terror bird was quick and agile
-Bird ruled South America with fighting style
-Used hatchet-type jabs to take down prey
AN ANCIENT "terror bird" has been named the Muhammad Ali of predators, using the famed boxer's agile attack and retreat strategy while attacking prey.
Computer imaging and CT scans were used by an international team of scientists, including an expert from the University of NSW, to reveal the predatory behaviour of the andalgalornis.
Andalgalornis couldn't fly but the 1.4m tall bird, which lived in northwestern Argentina about six million years ago, weighed 40kg and had an unusually large, rigid skull and hawk-like hooked beak.
It would have avoided close combat and used hatchet-like jabs to take down its victims, according to the study published in the journal PLoS ONE.
"We found that this terror bird was well adapted to drive in its deep, narrow beak then pull back with that wickedly recurved tip," study co-author and NSW University School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences'

Computational Biomechanics research group director Dr Stephen Wroe said.
"As a heavyweight, its fighting style was more like that of a bobbing, weaving Muhammad Ali than a Joe Frazier wading into the fray and slugging it out."
Terror birds were carnivorous flightless birds up to almost 3m tall which were the dominant predators in ancient South America.
Researchers tested the mechanical performance of an andalgalornis skull under different simulated feeding behaviours, running computer simulations to model the biomechanics of three ways of attacking prey.
They were a vertical killing bite, pulling back with its neck to dismember prey and shaking the skull from side to side when dealing with struggling prey.
The computer images showed coloured images of the skull, which revealed blue cool areas depicting where stresses on the skull were low, and white hot areas where stresses were high.
"When we simulated shaking its head from side to side, its skull lights up like a Christmas tree," Dr Wroe said.
"It really does not handle that kind of stress well.
"If it was taking big prey it would have to use a very precise bite in a repeated attack-and-retreat strategy.

"Once killed, the prey would have then been ripped into bite-sized morsels or, if possible, swallowed whole."