Fossil Birds From Mongolia And China American Museum Novitates

This book is a comprehensive, chronologically ordered review of China's vertebrate fossil record. It also presents a history of vertebrate paleontological studies in China and an entrée to some important issues of systematics, evolutionary history, paleoecology, taphonomy, and functional anatomy best elucidated by China's fossils.

"Mesozoic Birds is the first book to bring together world-renowned specialists on fossil birds and their importance to avian origins and, more importantly, it stresses a unified approach (cladistics) and presents the most anatomically detailed analyses available to date. No other study or collection of studies has ever done so much. How could the project not be welcomed by its audience of paleontologists, ornithologists, and evolutionary biologists!"—David Weishampel, editor of The Dinosauria "This is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to the relationships and evolution of the birds that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. Its wealth of information and its diversity of viewpoints will ensure that this indispensable volume is used and discussed for many years to come."—Kevin Padian, University of California, Berkeley

Understanding of the Asian early Paleogene avifauna is limited relative to that of North American and European avifauna of the same period. While major patterns of mammalian faunal exchange among these three regions across the Paleocene/Eocene boundary have been described, much less is known about the dynamics of bird diversity over the same time interval. Here, we report bird fossils from the earliest Eocene Bumban Member of the Naranbulag Formation in central Mongolia that add to the known record from Asia from just after this boundary. Most of this material, collected by the joint American Museum of Natural History/Mongolia Academy of Sciences expeditions, is referable to a previously described taxon in Presbyornithidae (Anseriformes). However, five isolated elements are identified as comprising at least four species from at least three other major avian clades. While further inclusive phylogenetic analyses of each of these clades are necessary, the new remains represent possible earliest occurrences in Asia of these clades. The material includes a humerus and a furcula from shorebirds (Pan-Charadriiformes), a quadrate from a stem member of the flamingo-grebe lineage (Pan-Mirandornithes), and a coracoid from a stem galliform (Pangalliformes). We also report a humerus with uncertain phylogenetic affinities but with similarities to core Gruiformes. These new fossils expand our knowledge of the Asian avifauna during this time and have the potential to further inform our understanding of the early biogeography of these clades. The shorebird and flamingo-grebe material indicate that both these lineages were present in Asia by the earliest Eocene. The pan-mirandornithine quadrate provides insight into the early feeding ecology of the flamingo-grebe clade.