Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-pwrkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-12T07:23:21.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

III.—New Extinct Bird from South Carolina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

R. W. Shufeldt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Early in January, 1916, Dr. O. P. Hay, of Washington, D.C., referred to me for description the fossil bone of a large bird that had been discovered in the eastern part of South Carolina some time previously. This specimen I at once recognized as the lower extremity of the right femur of some bird belonging to a species much larger than any existing form in the United States. I find this specimen to be thoroughly fossilized and of a dull-black colour, the edges of both condyles being considerably chipped off. On the antero-internal aspect the shaft appears to be cut away as if by some shaving implement. This, and where the shaft is broken nearly squarely across above, exposes a filling of a dense, very hard, pale-grey matrix, with a grain as fine as clay. Judging from this there should be no doubt but that this femur was a thoroughly pneumatic one in the living bird, and that the thickness of the osseous wall of the shaft was by no means great, as may be appreciated by examining the figures on the accompanying Plate XV.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 3 , Issue 8 , August 1916 , pp. 343 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1916

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 345 note 1 American Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. xxxii, art. vi, pp. 123–78, New York, 07 9, 1913; see pl. xxxvi, fig. 431.Google Scholar

page 345 note 2 Cope, E. D., Bull. U.S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. Terr., iv, pp. 387–9, 1878.Google Scholar

page 345 note 3 Marsh, O. C., Odontornithes, pl. xiii, figs. 1–4.Google Scholar

page 346 note 1 Shufeldt, R. W., “Osteology of Birds”: New York State Education Department, State Museum Bull. 130, 1909, pp. 330–40. Attention is especially invited to what I say on p. 335 as to the femur in Branta agreeing with that bone in Olor. There are, of course, certain minor swan and goose characters of this bone, which can be both recognized and appreciated, and which would properly fall in the category of “general and special characters”; otherwise, the statement there made will hold good.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 346 note 2 Shufeldt, R. W., “An Arrangement of the Families and Higher Groups of Birds”: Amer. Nat., vol. xxxviii, Nos. 455–6, pp. 833–57, Nov.–Dec., 1904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 346 note 3 R. W. Shufeldt, ibid., p. 337.

page 347 note 1 I am not responsible for the title given pl. lvii of that paper; and on the page cited I say that it appears to have been a gallinaceous fowl, but that the material does not admit of a scientific reference.