The Anhima _Palamedea cornuta_

[bz050@freenet.carleton.ca (Ben S. Roesch)]

I was looking through Oliver Goldsmith's History of the Natural World and
noticed an old painting of the South American Anhima or Horned screamer.
What was so neat about it is that on the fore-part of each wing was a
straight triangular spur, which are about as thick as a person's finger.
The look of the spurs in the painting reminded me so much of Mononykus and
of course the new reconstructions of the phorusrhacids with no wings but
the single clawed fore arm.

The anhima lives in Brazil and is described in the book as "a water fowl of
the rapacious kind, and bigger than a swan."

An interesting tidbit anyway.

ciao!

ben...