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The diversity and biogeography of late Pleistocene birds from the lowland Neotropics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David W. Steadman ,
Jessica A. Oswald  and
Ascanio D. Rincόn
David W. Steadman*
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
Jessica A. Oswald
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA Museum of Natural Science, 119 Foster Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
Ascanio D. Rincόn
Affiliation:
Laboratorio de Paleontología, Centro de Ecología, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Caracas 1020-A, Venezuela
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail address:dws@flmnh.ufl.edu (D.W. Steadman).
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Abstract

The Neotropical lowlands sustain the world's richest bird communities, yet little that we know about their history is based on paleontology. Fossils afford a way to investigate distributional shifts in individual species, and thus improve our understanding of long-term change in Neotropical bird communities. We report a species-rich avian fossil sample from a late Pleistocene tar seep (Mene de Inciarte) in northwestern Venezuela. A mere 175 identified fossils from Mene de Inciarte represent 73 species of birds, among which six are extinct, and eight others no longer occur within 100 km. These 14 species consist mainly of ducks (Anatidae), snipe (Scolopacidae), vultures/condors (Vulturidae), hawks/eagles (Accipitridae), and blackbirds (Icteridae). Neotropical bird communities were richer in the late Pleistocene than today; their considerable extinction may be related to collapse of the large mammal fauna at that time. The species assemblage at Mene de Inciarte suggests that biogeographic patterns, even at continental scales, have been remarkably labile over short geological time frames. Mene de Inciarte is but one of 300 + tar seeps in Venezuela, only two of which have been explored for fossils. We may be on the cusp of an exciting new era of avian paleontology in the Neotropics.

Keywords

BiogeographyBirdsExtinctionFossilsLate PleistoceneNeotropicsSpecies richnessVenezuela
Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 555 - 564
Copyright
University of Washington

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