]?Laurillardia smoleni sp. nov. (1 Viewer)

Gerald Mayr, Zbigniew M. Bocheński, Teresa Tomek, Krzysztof Wertz, Małgorzata Bieńkowska-Wasiluk & Albrecht Manegold, 2019

Skeletons from the early Oligocene of Poland fill a significant temporal gap in the fossil record of upupiform birds (hoopoes and allies)

Historical Biology, An International Journal of Paleobiology Latest Articles

Abstract: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2019.1570507?journalCode=ghbi20

Upupiformes is the avian clade including extant hoopoes (Upupidae) and wood hoopoes (Phoeniculidae). Upupiform birds are abundantly represented in some Eocene fossil sites and are also known from early Miocene localities, but the fossil record in between is surprisingly scant. This gap of over 25 million years is bridged by two skeletons from the early Oligocene of Poland. One of the fossils is described as a new species, ?Laurillardia smoleni, sp. nov., the other is tentatively referred to Laurillardia munieri Flot, 1891. We detail that these stem group Upupiformes are more closely related to the crown group than are the Eocene Messelirrisoridae. The specimens show that very small upupiform birds coexisted with passerines (Passeriformes) for at least ten million years and challenge previous hypotheses that the arrival of passerines in Europe led to the demise of small non-passeriform arboreal birds. It remains elusive, why small upupiform birds became extinct in the Northern Hemisphere. Even though these insectivorous birds may not have found enough food after the emergence of cold Northern Hemispheric winters, it is an open question why very small-sized upupiform birds do not occur in the tropical regions of Asia but are today restricted to Africa south of the Sahara.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:A90B22E7-C3EC-4EAE-A757-F073EAF521F3

KEYWORDS: Aves, evolution, fossil birds, Laurillardia, morphology, taxonomy

Enjoy,

Fred

Excuses for the typo in the title of this thread, perhaps some one can change the header from ]?Laurillardia smoleni sp. nov. to ?Laurillardia smoleni sp. nov.

Systematic paleontology

Aves Linnaeus, 1758
Bucerotes sensu Mayr (2006)
Upupiformes sensu Mayr (1998)
?Laurillardiidae Harrison, 1979
?Laurillardia Milne-Edwards, 1871
?Laurillardia smoleni Bochenski, Mayr, Tomek, Wertz, Bienkowska-Wasiluk and Manegold, sp. nov.

Holotype
ISEA SD009Pa (slab) and BHC SD009Pb (counter slab), articulated skeleton on two slabs lacking the skull and the right leg

Etymology
The species is named after Damian Smoleń of Besko, who collected the holotype and made it available for study.

Type locality and horizon
The fossil was found in 2017 in the Rudawka Rymanowska locality (RR in Kotlarczyk et al. 2006; Ciurej and Haczewski 2012) situated about 60 kilometres south of Rzeszów, Podkarpackie Voivodeship (Subcarpathian Province) of southeastern Poland; geographical coordinates of the exposure: 49° 30ʹ48.3” N, 22°55ʹ35.8” E. It was collected in a natural exposure in the river bed of the Wisłok River, in the southern part of the Silesian Unit of the Outer Carpathians. The fossil stems from the uppermost layers of the Tylawa Limestones (see Ciurej and Haczewski 2012: figure 5; their samples of limestones RR 1B/06). The Tylawa Limestones are orrelated with the nannoplankton zone NP23 of Martini (1971) and the ichthyofaunal zone IPM2 (Kotlarczyk et al. 2006) and are dated to the early Oligocene, about 30–32 million years ago (Ciurej and Haczewski 2012; Vandenberghe et al. 2012).

cf. Laurillardia munieri Flot 1891

Referred specimen
SMNK-PAL 9200a+b (complete skeleton on two slabs; Figures 4, 5).

Locality and horizon
The specimen was acquired in 2015 by SMNK from a private collector, who found it at one of the exposures at Jamna Dolna, ca. 8 km southeast of Bircza, in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship (Subcarpathian Province) of southeastern Poland; early Oligocene (Rupelian). The Rudawka Tractionite Member of the Menilite Formation exposed at Jamna Dolna is correlated with the nannoplankton zone NP23 of Martini (1971) and the ichthyofaunal zone IPM2 (Kotlarczyk et al. 2006) and is dated to the early Oligocene, about 30–32 million years ago (Vandenberghe et al. 2012).

Fred