Ben Creisler
New Cenozoic bird papers with free pdfs:
We report fossils of the darter Anhinga pannonica Lambrecht, 1916 from two late Miocene (Tortonian, 11.62 and 11.44 Ma) avifaunas in Southern Germany. The material from the hominid locality Hammerschmiede near Pforzen represents the most comprehensive record of this species and includes most major postcranial elements except for the tarsometatarsus. We furthermore show that the putative cormorant Phalacrocorax brunhuberi (von Ammon, 1918) from the middle Miocene of Regensburg-Dechbetten is another, previously misclassified, record of A. pannonica, and this may also be true for early Miocene fossils described as P. intermedius Milne-Edwards, 1867. A. pannonica was distinctly larger than extant darters and reached the size of A. grandis from the late Miocene of North America. We detail that only fossils from the Miocene of Europe and Africa can be referred to A. pannonica, whereas putative records from Asia fall within the size range of extant darters. A. pannonica appears to have been a long-living species (16 to 6 Ma) with an extensive distribution from the equator to the northern mid-latitudes. The extinction of large-sized darters in Europe is likely to have been due to climatic cooling in the late Neogene, but the reasons for their disappearance in Africa and South America remain elusive.
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Helen F. James (2020)
The Irvingtonian Avifauna of Cumberland Bone Cave, Maryland.
Zootaxa 4772(1): 111-131
Free pdf:
https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4772.1.4/39666The early and mid-Pleistocene avian communities of North America are best known from the Rocky Mountain region and peninsular Florida. In the Appalachian Mountain region, only a small number of avian bones from mid-latitude cave deposits have been attributed to this time period. Here, I enlarge this record by reporting on bird bones from Cumberland Bone Cave in western Maryland, a well-known locality for large and small Irvingtonian mammals and other vertebrates. The taxa identified encompass ground birds, waterfowl, a hawk, two eagles, a vulture, an owl, a jay, a flycatcher, a junco or sparrow, and a finch. No purely boreal elements are confirmed as part of the avian assemblage, and all of the extant species that are positively or tentatively identified in the assemblage still occur in the region today. An immature bone referred to the Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus (Bechstein)) represents an Irvingtonian breeding record for the species in Maryland. This record occurs at the northern limit of the current breeding range for the genus. Extinct species in the assemblage include the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius (Linnaeus)), a large screech owl (Megascops guildayi (Brodkorb & Mourer-Chauvirà 1984)), and the large goose, Branta dickeyi Miller 1924. It can be argued that none of these represent the extinction of a phyletic lineage during the Irvingtonian. Based on the broad habitat preferences of modern counterparts of the birds in the assemblage, we can expect that Irvingtonian habitats near the site included mixed forest with mast-producing hardwoods and both early and later successional stages represented. There must have been fluvial, wetland, or lacustrine habitat suitable for waterbirds nearby, and probably also open woodland or grassy savannah areas, suitable for vulture foraging, turkey nesting, and booming by Ruffed Grouse.
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