RAHONAVIDAE

Madagascar is home to many strange, scaly creatures, from the saber-toothed croctigers to the fleet-footed cains, but amid these antidelvian monsters, there dwell other predators.  Small, nimble, and sleekly feathered, the rahonavids look rather like Eurasian draks, but are actually derived from a different line, one that split from the deinonychosaurs some time during the Jurassic. With weakly stiffened tails and birdlike shoulders, the Malagasy bureaucrat birds are the descendants of  †Rahonavis, a Late Cretaceous relative of †Archaeopteryx. The discovery of this fact has been very fortunate not only for specbiology but also for palaeontology, because DNA studies of this group have shown that Rahonavis (and therefore probably Archaeopteryx) is more closely related to dromaeosaurs than to the short-tailed birds.

(fig. 1) Bureaucratbird, Magistratavis horribilis (Madagascar)

The bureaucratbird (Magistratavis horribilis) is what winners look like; its body plan has hardly changed from that of †Rahonavis, now  70 million years extinct. On long legs it stalks the Malagasy grassland like a Home Earth secretarybird in search for food, which is mostly comprised of snakes, lizards, unrats, unmice and unbunnies, the smaller Malagasy possums, and big insects. Unlike the poor secretarybird, the bureaucratbird has a snout full of sharply tipped teeth, big claws on all 3 fingers per wing, and an intimidating sickle claw on each 2^nd toe. This weaponry allows the bureaucrat to quickly subdue even relatively large prey.

When threatened by a sufficiently big predator, like a lesser stef (see below) or a croclion, bureaucrats normally run away, but if pressed, they are pretty good fliers. They also use their long wings to cross rivers, in their complicated courtship rituals, and to shield their nests from sun and rain.

The lesser stef (Nesonychus minor) is a 2 metre long flightless predator that will readily attack anything from the size of a marsupial civet to that of a subadult hoplocroc, and will run after honkers, hypsies and alvies if it manages to surprise them. Externally it hardly differs from a drak; it even has serrated teeth. It lives in packs and has communal nests that are fiercely defended.

The greater stef (Nesonychus maior) is a rather cryptic forest animal, quite similar to the South American jagular. It is named after its call, which was known long before the animal was first seen. At 4 m in length, the greater stef is the largest member of Rahonavidae. It ambushes honkers and sometimes attacks young sauropods when there are no croctigers nearby. One unconfirmed report says that the males grow long, colorful wing feathers in the mating season, and that the females grow similarly long but more camouflage-colored feathers that are used for brooding (to shield the eggs/young from rain). Unfortunately that particular spexplorer was more interested in croctigers and so sadly died before publishing his findings.

The flying mattiraptor (Compsognathornis aumalae) resembles the bureaucratbird and hunts for similar prey, but lives in the dense rainforests. It flies more seldom than the bureaucratbird and has shorter and more rounded wings. In the mating season the males are covered in magnificent green plumage with a large red spot on each wing.

David Marjanović and Daniel Bensen

             ,=†Rahonavis ostromi
=Rahonavidae=| 
             | ,=Magistratavis horribilis (Bureaucratbird)
             `=|
               | ,=Compsognathornis aumalae (Flying mattiraptor)
               `=|
                 |            ,=Nesonychus minor (Lesser stef)
                 `=Nesonychus=|
                              `=Nesonychus maior (Greater stef)

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