''Coragyps occidentalis'', the Pleistocene black vulture, is an extinct species of

New World vulture The New World vulture or condor family, Cathartidae, contains seven extant species in five genera. It includes five extant vultures and two extant condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas. The "New World" vultures were widesprea ...

that lived throughout

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

. It was formerly thought to be the ancestor to the modern

black vulture The black vulture (''Coragyps atratus''), also known as the American black vulture, Mexican vulture, zopilote, urubu, or gallinazo, is a bird in the New World vulture family whose range extends from the northeastern United States to Peru, Cen ...

(''C. atratus''), but is now thought to have evolved from it; the modern black vulture is paraphyletic with respect to it.

Taxonomy

Well documented from

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

bones, this species and the black vulture were previously thought to be

chronospecies A chronospecies is a species derived from a sequential development pattern that involves continual and uniform changes from an extinct ancestral form on an evolutionary scale. The sequence of alterations eventually produces a population that is p ...

. Fossil (or subfossil) black vultures cannot necessarily be attributed to the Pleistocene or the recent species without further information: the same size variation found in the living bird was also present in its larger prehistoric relative. As the Pleistocene and current black vultures form an evolutionary continuum rather than

splitting Splitting may refer to: * Splitting (psychology) * Lumpers and splitters, in classification or taxonomy * Wood splitting * Tongue splitting * Splitting, railway operation Mathematics * Heegaard splitting * Splitting field * Splitting principle ...

into two or more lineages, some included the Pleistocene

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

in ''C. atratus''. In 2022, a phylogenetic study using DNA extracted from a well-preserved fossil specimen found in 1904 near

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, i ...

resolved the relationships of ''C. occidentalis''. This study found that ''C. occidentalis'' to be nestled within the South American clade of ''C. atratus'', having diverged from the southwestern South American clade around 300,000 - 400,000 years ago. While ''C. atratus'' is primarily a lowland species, ''C. occidentalis'' had specialized to colder high-elevation environments, growing larger and more robust in the process. Following this, it spread north to North America. ''C. occidentalis'' was specialized to feed on carrion from

Pleistocene megafauna Pleistocene megafauna is the set of large animals that lived on Earth during the Pleistocene epoch. Pleistocene megafauna became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event resulting in substantial changes to ecosystems globally. The role of ...

; following the

Quaternary extinction event The Quaternary period (from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present) has seen the extinctions of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which have resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity and the extinction of key ecolog ...

, it also went extinct. Humans may have interacted with this species: a subfossil bone of the ''C. occidentalis'' was found in a Paleo Indian to

Early Archaic Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * E ...

(9000–8000 years

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

) midden at

Five Mile Rapids Celilo Falls (Wyam, meaning "echo of falling water" or "sound of water upon the rocks," in several native languages) was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between the U.S ...

near

The Dalles, Oregon The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the largest city on the Oregon side of the Columbia River between the Portland Metropolitan Area, and Hermisto ...

Description

This species did not differ much from the modern

in most aspects except size; it was some 10–15% larger. It also had a relatively flatter and wider bill. It filled the same

ecological niche In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. Three variants of ecological niche are described by It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for ...

as the living form, but was more specialized to feed on larger animals, which may have been the cause for its extinction. The Pleistocene black vulture showed size variation much like the modern species, with southern populations smaller than those from the north. These populations are classified as subspecies, with the larger northern populations known as ''Coragyps occidentalis occidentalis'' and the smaller populations known as ''C. o. mexicanus''. The southern birds were of the same size as present-day northern black vultures and can only be distinguished by their somewhat stouter tarsometatarsus and the flatter and wider bills, and even then only with any certainty if the location where the fossils were found is known.

Distribution

''C. occidentalis'' was a high-altitude specialist, being primarily found throughout the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

of South America north to the arid montane regions of the western

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. However, it could also venture into lower-elevation areas, as fossil specimens are known from lowland areas on both continents, as far east as

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. It is thought that these lowland areas may have provided feeding opportunities, including trapped megafauna in the La Brea Tar Pits, mass accumulations of dead

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

, and washed-up carcasses on the Florida coastal plain.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q25456222 Cathartidae Pleistocene birds of North America