Buttonquail from the Pleistocene of Crimea (1 Viewer)

[albertonykus]

Zelenkov, N.V. (2024)
Unexpected find of a buttonquail (Aves: Charadriiformes: Turnicidae) in the Lower Pleistocene of Crimea
Doklady Biological Sciences (advance online publication)
doi: 10.1134/S0012496623600148

Buttonquails (family Turnicidae of the order Charadriiformes) are a morphologically specialized group of small, predominantly tropical birds of open landscapes, which is extremely poorly represented in the fossil record. The article describes a fragmentary humerus of a buttonquail from the Lower Pleistocene of the Taurida Cave in central Crimea. This is the first find of the family Turnicidae in Eurasia in a chronological interval from the Pliocene through the Middle Pleistocene. The find highlights the limited nature of available information on the taxonomic composition of Early Quaternary Eurasian avifaunas, even at the family level, and sheds light on the Late Cenozoic evolutionary history of Turnicidae.

 

[Fred Ruhe]

Fig. 1. Modern distribution range and fossil Pliocene–Pleistocene finds of buttonquails (Turnicidae). Black, modern range of the
family Turnicidae; white circles, Pliocene and Pleistocene finds known previously (see text); asterisk, new Early Pleistocene find
of Turnix sp. in the Taurida Cave, Central Crimea.

Fig. 2. Distal fragment of the humerus of Turnix sp. from the Lower Pleistocene of the Taurida Cave as compared with selected
fossil and modern Turnicidae: (a, e) specimen PIN no. 5644/1777, Turnix sp.; Taurida Cave, Lower Pleistocene of Crimea;
(b) Turnicidae gen. indet., specimen NMNHU Eg-2-02 from the National Science and Natural History Museum, Kyiv; locality
Egorovka-2, Odesa region, Ukraine; Upper Miocene; (c) Turnix tanki Blyth, 1843, osteological collection of PIN, specimen no.
53-5-1, modern; (d) Turnix ocellatus (Scopoli, 1786), specimen no. MNHN 1884-2466, National Museum of Natural History,
Paris; modern. (a–d) Cranial and (e) caudal views. Designations: cd, condylus dorsalis; cv, condylus ventralis; ed, epicondylus
dorsalis; fb, fossa m. brachialis; ext, distal extension; psd, processus supracondylaris dorsalis.


Fred