Lithornithidae

Lithornithidae
	Pseudocrypturus cercanaxius in the Zoologisk Museum in Copenhagen .
Temporal occurrence
	Lower Paleocene to Middle Eocene
Locations
	Europe ( Messel Pit ); Western North America ( Green River Formation );
Systematics
	Jaw mouths (Gnathostomata)
	Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
	Birds (aves)
	Great Pine Birds (Palaeognathae)
	Lithornithiformes
	Lithornithidae
Scientific name
	Lithornithiformes
	Houde, 1988
Scientific name
	Lithornithidae
	Houde , 1988

The Lithornithidae are an extinct family of cockle-like birds that lived from the Lower Paleocene to the Lower Eocene . The family includes four genera, Calciavis , Lithornis , Paracathartes and Pseudocrypturus .

The Lithornithidae belong to the ancient jawbirds (Palaeognathae), so are related to the ratites in addition to the cockroaches .

They are very similar to the cockroaches, but had well-developed wings, a more pronounced ability to fly and had large, curved claws that were still suitable for sitting up in trees. The claws of the ground-dwelling cockles are flat. The skull bones were only incompletely fused together, the sternum was keeled, and a weakly fused pygostyle had a short tail.

The first describer Peter Houde compared their beak with that of the kiwifruit and assumed that they were poking around for invertebrates in the soil of the tree-lined flood plains in western North America of the Paleogene .

literature

Alan Feduccia : The Origin and Evolution of the Birds. Pages 271-275, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1999, ISBN 0300078617 .

Individual evidence

↑ Gerald Mayr: First substantial Middle Eocene record of the Lithornithidae (Aves): A postcranial skeleton from Messel (Germany). Annales de Paléontologie 94 (2008) 29-37 doi : 10.1016 / j.annpal.2007.12.004
↑ Nesbitt, Sterling J. & Clarke, Julia A. 2016. The anatomy and taxonomy of the exquisitely preserved Green River Formation (early Eocene) lithornithids (Aves) and the relationships of Lithornithidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 406, 91 pp. doi: 10.5531 / sd.sp.25

Web links

Palæos Lithornithiformes

[1] Gerald Mayr: First substantial Middle Eocene record of the Lithornithidae (Aves): A postcranial skeleton from Messel (Germany). Annales de Paléontologie 94 (2008) 29-37 doi : 10.1016 / j.annpal.2007.12.004

[2] Nesbitt, Sterling J. & Clarke, Julia A. 2016. The anatomy and taxonomy of the exquisitely preserved Green River Formation (early Eocene) lithornithids (Aves) and the relationships of Lithornithidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 406, 91 pp. doi: 10.5531 / sd.sp.25