The Aónikenk people of Argentina and Chile have a legend that talks about an evil spirit of the cold by the name of 'Kelenken', which is described as a giant black bird of prey. A Chilean Jesuit priest known as Alonso de Ovalle produced a map that has been dated to 1641 - and it depicts animals such as llamas and rheas with an accurate scale, but also shows something resembling an enormous raptor standing on a steppe. This bizarre image (shown above) resembles an extinct bird of the higher classification Phorusrhacoidea. These animals were flightless predators that could reach 9.8ft tall in some cases.
Interestingly, a Professor F. B. Loomis released an article in the New York Times in 1922 discussing cryptozoological occurences in Patagonia - mostly living plesiosaurs - but also noted that several local cowboys 'sometimes talk of great wingless birds'. He attributed this to their drunken hallucinations, but how could these mainly illiterate men have known about the history of terror birds in the region if not from personal experience?
If these bizarre events are the sum of something more than coincidence, then they could serve to provide evidence that the terror birds may have still roamed Patagonia until roughly 100 years ago.
Sources: http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/flying-creatures-strange-birds-part-3.html and https://www.nytimes.com/1922/03/11/archives/seeing-things-in-patagonia.html
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