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| TITLE: | A new species of Plesiocathartes (Aves: ?Leptosomidae) from the Middle Eocene of Messel, Germany
| | AUTHOR: | Gerald Mayr
| | JOURNAL: | PaleoBios
| | PUBLISHED: | May 15, 2002
| | NOTES: | 22(1)
| | ABSTRACT: | A new species of the genus Plesiocathartes Gaillard 1908 is described from the middle Eocene of Messel (Germany). Plesiocathartes kelleri sp. nov. is represented by two articulated skeletons and is the most substantial record of the genus, previously only known from a few isolated bones. In addition, a distal end of a tarsometatarsus of Plesiocathartes sp. is described from the lower Eocene London Clay of England. The new specimens clearly demonstrate that Plesiocathartes is no early European representative of the Cathartidae (New World vultures) as assumed by earlier authors. Instead, both in terms of derived characters and in overall morphology, Plesiocathartes kelleri most closely corresponds to the Leptosomidae (Cuckoo-rollers), which today only occur in the Madagascan region. Accordingly, the genus Plesiocathartes is tentatively assigned to the Leptosomidae. If this classification is correct, it would be the first Tertiary fossil record of the Leptosomidae, and indicate that the extant distribution of this family is relictual.
| | COLLECTION: | PaleoBios Archive Public
| | ID: | 147
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