The earliest known pelican reveals 30 million years of evolutionary stasis in beak morphology

Journal of Ornithology - Tập 152 - Trang 15-20 - 2010
Antoine Louchart1, Nicolas Tourment2, Julie Carrier3
1Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, équipe “Evo-dévo de la denture chez les Vertébrés”, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, INRA, Lyon cedex 07, France
2Nicolas Tourment, Marseille, France
3Collège le Bassenon, Condrieu, France

Tóm tắt

The feeding apparatus of Paleogene birds is rarely well-preserved. Here, we describe the earliest known pelican (early Oligocene, Luberon, southeastern France), with its almost complete beak. Morphologically identical to modern pelicans, the new fossil already shows several advanced features unique to extant species of the genus Pelecanus. It probably belongs to the lineage ancestral to all or some of these pelican species. This fossil reveals a remarkable evolutionary stasis in the morphology of such an advanced avian feeding apparatus through ca. 30 million years. Several hypotheses are proposed to suggest explanations for such examples of long stases in volant homeothermic vertebrates.

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