''Phoenicopterus copei'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

species of

flamingo Flamingos or flamingoes () are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, which is the only extant family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. There are four flamingo species distributed throughout the Americas (including the Caribbe ...

that inhabited North America during the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...

. Its fossils have been discovered in

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. Many of these localities preserve the remains of juvenile individuals, indicating that this species nested at the lakes found there. In some areas like California and Florida it coexisted with smaller flamingo species. ''P. copei'' was a large species of ''Phoenicopterus'', described as being greater in size than modern American flamingos.

History

Although multiple flamingo species are known from North America today, ''Phoenicopterus copei'' was the first fossil taxon of this family described. The species was erected by Robert Wilson Shufeldt in 1891 based on remains discovered at Fossil Lake,

. In 1955 Hildegarde Howard described the remains of two differently sized flamingos from Lake Manix in California, assigning the smaller remains to a new species and the larger to ''Phoenicopterus copei''. However this assignment is only tentative, primarily based on the fact that the Lake Manix

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bird bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) a ...

is visibly broadened similar to the Fossil Lake

tibiotarsus The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia. A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae. These ...

. Howard reasons that the width of these elements matching could suggest that they belonged to the same species, seeing as the two bones would articulate with one another in life. Remains of a juvenile specimen were later also identified from the Chimalhuacan locality at Lake Texcoco, approximately east of the

Zócalo Zócalo () is the common name of the town square, main square in central Mexico City. Prior to the European colonization of the Americas, colonial period, it was the main ceremonial center in the Aztecs, Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The plaza us ...

. The range of ''P. copei'' was again expanded in 1995, when Steven D. Emslie reported bones assigned to the species from the

Irvingtonian The Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age on the geologic timescale is the North American faunal stage according to the North American Land Mammal Ages chronology (NALMA), spanning from 1.8 million – 250,000 years Before Present, BP.

Leisy Shell Pit in Hillsborough County,

. This marked the first record of the species from the eastern United States and the earliest appearance of it in the fossil record.

Description

Shufeldt described ''Phoenicopterus copei'' as having both longer legs as well as longer wings than the modern

American flamingo The American flamingo (''Phoenicopterus ruber'') is a large species of flamingo native to the West Indies, northern South America (including the Galápagos Islands) and the Yucatán Peninsula. It is closely related to the greater flamingo and ...

. The tibiotarsus has a distal end recognized for being broader than in either the American or

greater flamingo The greater flamingo (''Phoenicopterus roseus'') is the most widespread and largest species of the flamingo family. Common in the Old World, they are found in Northern (coastal) and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Subcontinent (south of the Him ...

, with wide spaces between the individual condyles. This matches the anatomy of the intercotylar tubercle as seen in the Lake Manix specimen, which shows that that element is high and pointed like in the American flamingo, but also broadened to accommodate the more widely spaced condyles. The species appears to have been among the larger known flamingos, as Howard describes the remains of a juvenile bird from Lake Manix as being within the size range of modern American and greater flamingos, specifically noting that this does not represent the size obtained by a mature animal. This is further supported by Emslie, who describes ''P. copei'' as being larger than the American flamingo.

Paleobiology

The presence of juvenile flamingo fossils indicate that ''Phoenicopterus copei'' nested and raised its young in many of the localities it had been found in, which includes Lake Texcoco in Mexico as well as Fossil Lake in Oregon and Lake Manix in California. This indicates that ''Phoenicopterus copei'' was a widespread genus with a significant breeding range, which may also include Hillsborough County, San Marcos and Chapala based on the discovery of fragmentary remains from these regions. This would match well with the preferred habitat of modern flamingos, which are found to inhabit shallow lakes that allow them to build cone-like nests from mud and offer microorganisms as a food source, which they filter from the mud and water. In some parts of its range, ''P. copei'' would have coexisted with other flamingo species. Namely with '' Phoenicopterus minutus'' at Lake Manix and the American flamingo in Florida. In both these instances, ''P. copei'' would have been the larger taxon.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q16110629 Pleistocene birds of North America Fossil taxa described in 1891 copei