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Geranoididae
Geranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds.Gerald Mayr (2009). Paleogene Fossil Birds Recent research shows that these birds may actually be palaeognaths related to ostriches. Classification It is rather unambiguous that geranoidids are either part of or stem representatives of Gruoidea, the clade that includes modern cranes, limpkins and trumpeters, though their precise relationship varies among studies, some recovering them as sister taxa to another clade of flightless ratite-like birds, the eogruiids. The most recent consensus appears to be that geranoidids are outside of Gruoidea, with eogruiids being more closely related to modern cranes. However, Mayr (2019) argued that close affinities between Geranoididae and the palaeognathous family Palaeotididae are at least as well supported as the classification of geranoidids into the Gruifo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willwood Formation
The Willwood Formation is a sedimentary sequence deposited during the late Paleocene to early Eocene, or Clarkforkian, Wasatchian and Bridgerian in the North American land mammal age, NALMA classification.Willwood Formation at Fossilworks.orgNeasham & Vondra, 1972 Description It consists of fine grained clastic rocks (mudstone and shale) interbedded with medium grained clastic rocks (sandstone) and sporadic Conglomerate (geology), conglomerates. The formation underlies portions of the Bighorn Basin of Big Horn County, Wyoming, Big Horn, Hot Springs County, Wyoming, Hot Springs, Park County, Wyoming, Park and Washakie County, Wyoming, Washakie counties of Wyoming. Dating ...
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Struthioniformes
Struthioniformes is an order of birds with only a single extant family, Struthionidae, containing the ostriches. Several other extinct families are known, spanning across the Northern Hemisphere, from the Early Eocene to the early Pliocene, including a variety of flightless forms like the Paleotididae, Geranoididae, Eogruidae and Ergilornithidae, the latter two thought to be closely related to Struthionidae. Evolutionary history According to Mayr and Zelenkov (2021), all Struthioniformes are united by the following characters: "a very long and narrow tarsometatarsus with short trochleae for the second and fourth toes, a tubercle next to the pons supratendineus on the distal end of the tibiotarsus, as well as a shortening of all non-ungual phalanges of the fourth toe except for the proximal one" All known members of the group are thought to have been flightless. Struthioniformes were widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Eocene, including Paleotididae from Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eogruiids
Eogruidae (also spelled Eogruiidae in some publications) is a family of large, flightless birds that inhabited Asia from the Eocene to Pliocene epochs. Related to modern ostriches, it was formerly thought to be related to cranes, limpkins and trumpeters and that the similarities with ostriches were due to similar speciations to cursoriality, with both groups showing reduced numbers of toes to two in some taxa.Kurochkin, E.N. 1976. A survey of the Paleogene birds of Asia. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 27:75-86.Kurochkin, E.N. 1981. New representatives and evolution of two archaic gruiform families in Eurasia. Transactions of the Soviet-Mongolian Paleontologial Expedition 15:59-85. It has been suggested that competition from true ostriches has caused the extinction of these birds, though this has never been formally tested and several ostrich taxa do occur in the late Cenozoic of AsiaMayr, G. (2009). Paleogene fossil birds. Springer. and some species do occur in areas w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeophasianus
''Palaeophasianus'' is an extinct genus of flightless Geranoididae birds that lived in North America during the Eocene period. Robert Wilson Shufeldt classified ''Palaeophasianus'' as a galliform when he described it in 1913. However it was transferred to Cracidae in 1964 by Pierce Brodkorb, while Joel Cracraft in 1968 placed it in Gruiformes. The only species in this genus is ''P. meleagroides'', and it is described as a "ground-dwelling carnivore". The fossil remains were found by the American Museum expedition of 1910 in Big Horn County, Wyoming, in the Willwood formation The Willwood Formation is a sedimentary sequence deposited during the late Paleocene to early Eocene, or Clarkforkian, Wasatchian and Bridgerian in the NALMA classification. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flightless Birds
Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the Inaccessible Island rail (length 12.5 cm, weight 34.7 g). The largest (both heaviest and tallest) flightless bird, which is also the largest living bird, is the ostrich (2.7 m, 156 kg). Many domesticated birds, such as the domestic chicken and domestic duck, have lost the ability to fly for extended periods, although their ancestral species, the red junglefowl and mallard, respectively, are capable of extended flight. A few particularly bred birds, such as the Broad Breasted White turkey, have become totally flightless as a result of selective breeding; the birds were bred to grow massive breast meat that weighs too much for the bird's wings to support in flight. Flightlessness has evolved in many different birds independently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeotis
''Palaeotis'' is a genus of paleognath birds from the middle Eocene epoch of central Europe. One species is known, ''Palaeotis weigelti''. The holotype specimen is a fossil tarsometatarsus and phalanx. Lambrect (1928) described it as an extinct bustard (genus ''Otis''), and gave it its consequent name (''Palaeotis'' means ''ancient bustard'').Lambrecht, K. (1928) ''Palaeotis weigelti n. g. sp., eine fossil trappe aus der mitteleozanen Braunkohle des Geiseltales. Jahrbuch hallesch. Verband., Halle, n.s., 7:11. After a suggestion by Storrs L. Olson, a review of the type specimen and the referral of several other fossils by Houde and Haubold (1987) concluded that ''Palaeotis'' is a palaeognath and assigned it to the same order as ostriches; the Struthioniformes.Houde, Peter. Haubold, Hartmut. (1987) Palaeovertebrata, 17 (2): 27 - 46, 6 figures. 20 June 1987. In 2021, it was considered a member of the family Paleotididae alongside '' Galligeranoides'' from the Early Eocene of France ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ratites
A ratite () is any of a diverse group of flightless, large, long-necked, and long-legged birds of the infraclass Palaeognathae. Kiwi, the exception, are much smaller and shorter-legged and are the only nocturnal extant ratites. The systematics of and relationships within the paleognath clade have been in flux. Previously, all the flightless members had been assigned to the order Struthioniformes, which is more recently regarded as containing only the ostrich. The modern bird superorder Palaeognathae consists of ratites and the flighted Neotropic tinamous (compare to Neognathae). Unlike other flightless birds, the ratites have no keel on their sternum — hence the name, from the Latin ''ratis'' (raft, a vessel which has no keel - in contradistinction to extant flighted birds with a keel). Without this to anchor their wing muscles, they could not have flown even if they developed suitable wings. Ratites are a paraphyletic group; tinamous fall within them, and are the sister group ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope Carbon-13, 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope Carbon-12, 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Popigai impact structure, Siberia and in what is now ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Birds Of North America
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extinct Flightless Birds
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Bird Families
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gastornis
''Gastornis'' is an extinct genus of large flightless birds that lived during the mid Paleocene to mid Eocene epochs of the Paleogene period. Fossils have been found in Europe, Asia and North America, with the remains from North America originally assigned to the genus ''Diatryma''. ''Gastornis'' species were very large birds, and have traditionally been considered to be predators of small mammals. However, several lines of evidence, including the lack of hooked claws in known ''Gastornis'' footprints and studies of their beak structure and isotopic signatures of their bones have caused scientists to reinterpret these birds as herbivores that probably fed on tough plant material and seeds. ''Gastornis'' is generally agreed to be related to Galloanserae, the group containing waterfowl and gamebirds. History ''Gastornis'' was first described in 1855 from a fragmentary skeleton. It was named after Gaston Planté, described as a "studious young man full of zeal", who had discover ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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