Paraptenodytes: Difference between revisions
m Dated {{Citation needed}}. (Build p613) |
(edited with ProveIt) |
||
| Line 27: | Line 27: | ||
Together with the related genus ''[[Arthrodytes]]'', they form the subfamily [[Paraptenodytinae]], which is not an ancestor of modern penguins.<ref name = bertellietal2006 /> |
Together with the related genus ''[[Arthrodytes]]'', they form the subfamily [[Paraptenodytinae]], which is not an ancestor of modern penguins.<ref name = bertellietal2006 /> |
||
==Discovery== |
|||
In 1933 the famous paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson led an expedition to collect fossils around the town of Trelew in Patagonia. At this time, Simpson was still a young man. Later he would become one of the “four horseman” of the New Synthesis of evolutionary theory, bringing the deep time perspective of paleontology into a new perspective on evolution unifying natural selection and genetics. In 1933, though, he was focused just on the exhilaration of collecting fossils. Near Trelew, the Chubut River meets the Atlantic today. It seems that this area also comprised an affluent estuarine ecosystem in the past and both terrestrial and aquatic animals accumulated, lived, and died here, quite often making it into the fossil record. During the trip, the team collected many mammal fossils but also perpetually came upon penguin bones. These were not the focus of the trip, but no good paleontologist would leave well-preserved fossils in the field regardless of what type of animal they belong too. More than a hundred scattered bones of average sized penguins were accumulated up, but one find in particular changed the face of penguin paleontology. This specimen was a roughly 20-25 million year old, proximately complete skeleton of a single bird – a rather large one by modern standards, approaching King Penguin size. Most of the leg, component of the flipper, many vertebrae were intact. Most importantly, the skull was there too – the first time a skull had ever been found for a fossil penguin. |
|||
At the conclusion of the successful field season, the team returned to the US with a bounty of fossils to prepare and study. Simpson was, as mentioned, a mammal paleontologist, more intriguingly fascinated in marsupials and such than in birds. Thus, he endeavored to pass the fossil penguin skeleton to one of the American Museum of Natural History’s many ornithologists. None, however, took him up on the offer. At the time, ornithologist’s were absorbed in details of the feathers and beaks of birds and had little interest in the bones of a penguin. Accumulations of stuffed skins were accentuated over osteological accumulations at the time (and still are in many museums) and so most ornithologists probably had scant appreciation for skeletal remains of any kind of bird.<ref name="Discovery">{{cite web | url=http://fossilpenguins.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/paraptenodytes-simpsons-great-discovery/ | title=Discovery | accessdate=December 31, 2011}}</ref> |
|||
==Footnotes== |
==Footnotes== |
||
{{Reflist}} |
{{Reflist}} |
||
Revision as of 03:43, 1 January 2012
| Paraptenodytes | |
|---|---|
| |
| Cast of the specimen AMNH3338 of Paraptenodytes antarcticus, of the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, Argentina | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | |
| Phylum: | |
| Class: | |
| Order: | |
| Family: | |
| Subfamily: | |
| Genus: | Paraptenodytes Ameghino, 1891
|
| Species | |
|
Paraptenodytes antarcticus (type) | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Metancylornis Ameghino, 1905 | |
Paraptenodytes is an extinct genus of penguins which contains two or three species sized between a Magellanic Penguin and an Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri).[citation needed] They are known from fossil bones ranging from a partial skeleton and some additional material in the case of P. antarcticus, and a single humerus in the case of P. brodkorbi. The latter species is therefore often considered invalid; a recent study[1] considers it indeed valid, but distinct enough not to belong into Paraptenodytes. The fossils were found in the Santa Cruz and Chubut Provinces of Patagonia, Argentina, in Patagonian Molasse Formation rocks of Early Miocene age; later occurrences are apparently from Late Miocene or possibly even Early Pliocene deposits[2].
Together with the related genus Arthrodytes, they form the subfamily Paraptenodytinae, which is not an ancestor of modern penguins.[1]
Discovery
In 1933 the famous paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson led an expedition to collect fossils around the town of Trelew in Patagonia. At this time, Simpson was still a young man. Later he would become one of the “four horseman” of the New Synthesis of evolutionary theory, bringing the deep time perspective of paleontology into a new perspective on evolution unifying natural selection and genetics. In 1933, though, he was focused just on the exhilaration of collecting fossils. Near Trelew, the Chubut River meets the Atlantic today. It seems that this area also comprised an affluent estuarine ecosystem in the past and both terrestrial and aquatic animals accumulated, lived, and died here, quite often making it into the fossil record. During the trip, the team collected many mammal fossils but also perpetually came upon penguin bones. These were not the focus of the trip, but no good paleontologist would leave well-preserved fossils in the field regardless of what type of animal they belong too. More than a hundred scattered bones of average sized penguins were accumulated up, but one find in particular changed the face of penguin paleontology. This specimen was a roughly 20-25 million year old, proximately complete skeleton of a single bird – a rather large one by modern standards, approaching King Penguin size. Most of the leg, component of the flipper, many vertebrae were intact. Most importantly, the skull was there too – the first time a skull had ever been found for a fossil penguin.
At the conclusion of the successful field season, the team returned to the US with a bounty of fossils to prepare and study. Simpson was, as mentioned, a mammal paleontologist, more intriguingly fascinated in marsupials and such than in birds. Thus, he endeavored to pass the fossil penguin skeleton to one of the American Museum of Natural History’s many ornithologists. None, however, took him up on the offer. At the time, ornithologist’s were absorbed in details of the feathers and beaks of birds and had little interest in the bones of a penguin. Accumulations of stuffed skins were accentuated over osteological accumulations at the time (and still are in many museums) and so most ornithologists probably had scant appreciation for skeletal remains of any kind of bird.[3]
Footnotes
- ^ a b Bertelli et al. (2006)
- ^ Stucchi et al. (2003)
- ^ "Discovery". Retrieved December 31, 2011.
References
- Ameghino, Florentino (1891): Enumeración de las aves fósiles de la Repúiblica Argentina. Revista Argentina de Historia Natural 1: 441-445.
- Bertelli, Sara; Giannini, Norberto P. & Ksepka, Daniel T. (2006): Redescription and Phylogenetic Position of the Early Miocene Penguin Paraptenodytes antarcticus from Patagonia. American Museum Novitates 3525: 1-36. DOI: 10.1206/0003-0082(2006)3525[1:RAPPOT]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext
- Simpson, George Gaylord (1946): Fossil penguins. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 87: 7-99. PDF fulltext
- Simpson, George Gaylord (1971): Conspectus of Patagonian fossil penguins. American Museum Novitates 2488: 1-37. PDF fulltext
- Stucchi, Marcelo; Urbina, Mario & Giraldo, Alfredo (2003): Una nueva especie de Spheniscidae del Mioceno Tardío de la Formación Pisco, Perú. Bulletin Institut Français d'Études Andines 32(2): 361-375. PDF fulltext
 | This prehistoric bird article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |