• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

?Capitonides sp. (1 Viewer)

Peter Kovalik

Well-known member
Slovakia
Volkova, N.V. The first fossil barbet (Aves, Ramphastidae) from Siberia. J Ornithol (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-019-01719-x

Abstract:

Barbets are arboreal birds, inhabiting mainly tropical forests west of the Wallace’s Line. Fossil remains of barbets are extremely scarce. Until recently, only two species of barbets were described from the early and middle Miocene of Europe and several other undescribed fragments were mentioned in the literature. Here I report the first finds of barbets from Eastern Siberia. ?Capitonides sp. is here described from the late early Miocene of Baikal Lake based on a distal part of the humerus, an omal part of the coracoid, and a distal part of the ulna. The morphology of the fossil specimen does not allow attributing it to any of the modern genera, and thus ?Capitonides sp. is apparently a stem representative of the group. This find documents a previously unrecognized broad geographical distribution of barbets during the warmest phase (climatic optimum) of the Miocene. The observed similarity between the early–middle Miocene arboreal avifaunas of Western Europe and Eastern Siberia suggests the presence of a wide belt of relatively humid forests connecting Europe and Asia.
 
Volkova, N.V. The first fossil barbet (Aves, Ramphastidae) from Siberia. J Ornithol (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-019-01719-x

Abstract:

Until recently, only two species of barbets were described from the early and middle Miocene of Europe

These species are:

Capitonides europeus Ballmann, 1969 (Mlíkovský, 2002 transferred this species to the genus Trachyphonus Ranzani 1821)
Middle Miocene (MN 3) of Germany, Wintershof-West.

Capitonides protractus Ballmann, 1983 (Olson, 1991 transferred this species to the genus Trachyphonus Ranzani 1821)
Middle Miocene (MN 6) of Germany, Steinberg,

Fred
 
I just received the paper, so:

Systematic paleontology

Order Piciformes Meyer et Wolf, 1810
Suborder Pici Meyer et Wolf, 1810
Family Ramphastidae s. l. Vigors, 1825
Genus Capitonides Ballmann, 1969
Type species: Capitonides europeus Ballmann, 1969
Species composition: Capitonides europeus and Capitonides protractus B allmann, 1983 from the early and middle Miocene of Germany.

?Capitonides sp.

Referred material: Omal part of the left coracoid (PIN, no. 2614/267), distal part of the right humerus (PIN, no. 2614/268), and distal half of the left ulna (PIN, no. 2614/269).

Locality and age: Tagay locality, northwest coast of the Olkhon island (Baikal Lake) about 10 km southwest of Khuzhir; Irkutsk Region; Eastern Siberia, Russia (Fig. 1); Khalagay formation, late Early Miocene (approx. 18–16 Ma; Tesakov and Lopatin 2015; Sotnikova et al., 2019). See Zelenkov (2016a) for a review of the fossil avian fauna of this locality.

Fred
 
Warning! This thread is more than 5 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top