Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 11 December 1981:
Vol. 214. no. 4526, pp. 1236 - 1237
DOI: 10.1126/science.214.4526.1236
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Paleognathous Carinate Birds from the Early Tertiary of North America

PETER HOUDE 1 and STORRS L. OLSON 2

1 Department of Anatomy, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 20059
2 Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560

Fossils newly discovered in the Paleocene and early Eocene of western North America document some of the oldest birds known from nearly complete skeletons. These were medium-sized carinates with powers of sustained flight but which had a paleognathous palate like that of the flightless ostrich-like birds and the tinamous. The fossils provide additional evidence that the paleognathous palate is probably primitive and therefore should not be cited as a derived character state to define the ostrich-like birds as a monophyletic group.

Submitted on December 23, 1980
Revised on April 23, 1981


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Tinamous and Moa Flock Together: Mitochondrial Genome Sequence Analysis Reveals Independent Losses of Flight among Ratites.
M. J. Phillips, G. C. Gibb, E. A. Crimp, and D. Penny (2010)
Syst Biol 59, 90-107
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Mesozoic aviary takes form.
A. Feduccia (2006)
PNAS 103, 5-6
   Full Text »    PDF »
Explosive Evolution in Tertiary Birds and Mammals.
A. Feduccia and A. Feduccia (1995)
Science 267, 637-638
   PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)