RE: 55 million year old parrot found

[John Scanlon <riversleigh@outbackatisa.com.au>]

A great day for the early record of parrots but, apparently, not so great for 
Anette Kristoffersen who identified the parrot material and named Mopsitta 
tantus (sic) in her PhD (2002, unpublished; based on information in Waterhouse 
et al.), but didn't get even 20% of authorship on the paper. Maybe there's a 
good reason for that, I wouldn't know.

-----------------------------------------------
Dr John D. Scanlon, FCD
Riversleigh Fossil Centre, Outback at Isa
riversleigh@outbackatisa.com.au
http://tinyurl.com/f2rby
 
"Get this $%#@* python off me!", said Tom laocoonically.

-----Original Message-----
From: evelyn sobielski [mailto:koreke77@yahoo.de] 
Sent: 17 May, 2008 7:34 PM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: AW: 55 million year old parrot found

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00777.x

Sensational. Because the base of crown psittaciforms (= Psittacidae including 
Cacatuidae) is presently about as far away from Denmark as one can possibly 
get. Unfortunately it's just a humerus, but a nicely preserved one (except the 
deltopectoral crest). Raises a whole bunch of questions while answering 
approximately none:

"The presence of basal psittaciforms in Northern Europe, along with other, 
previously described parrots from the Eocene of Europe (e.g. Mourer-Chauvire 
1992; Mayr 1998; Mayr and Daniels 1998; Dyke and Cooper 2000), and no real 
fossil record of parrots below the KâT boundary (Dyke and Mayr 1999) is 
certainly consistent with an early Cenozoic radiation for (at least) the 
psittaciforms (Dyke and Cooper 2000)."

_Mopsitta_ predates the earliest unequivocal European psittacid by 30 Ma! It 
might thus be a quite basal lineage that in some aspects parallels the 
Psittacidae. A tarsometatarsus and/or some cranial pieces would be most 
helpful. Cladistic analysis of stem and crown psittaciform and selected other 
humeri might be attempted just for kicks. If nothing else, it would allow an 
assessment of which characters are *useful* (i.e. carry sufficiently strong 
phylogenetic signal) for quantitative analysis.

To call it "possible parrot" or so would be more in line with the paper, which 
notes some tantalizing similarities to Psittacidae but also that at present 
nothing more definite can be said about it.

I got the paper, if anyone needs it.


Eike


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