Premium
A review of Late Cretaceous fossil birds from Hungary
Author(s) -
Dyke Gareth J.,
Ősi Attila
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
geological journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1099-1034
pISSN - 0072-1050
DOI - 10.1002/gj.1209
Subject(s) - cretaceous , paleontology , mesozoic , taxon , geology , range (aeronautics) , period (music) , fossil record , materials science , physics , structural basin , acoustics , composite material
We review the previously described Late Cretaceous (Santonian) bird remains from the Csehbánya Formation in the Bakony Mountains of Hungary, augmenting initial work by Ősi (2008), and add a number of newly collected fossils. All together, the eight fossil specimens so far collected from this site are important to our understanding of avian evolution because they document a large range of taxon body sizes from at least one major lineage (Enantiornithes) and come from a critically undersampled time period in the Cretaceous. Globally, very little fossil bird material has been collected from the middle stages of the Late Cretaceous, the Coniacian and Santonian; most known taxa are either Early Cretaceous ( ca. 120 Ma) in age or are from the terminal Campanian and Maastrichtian ( ca. 70–65 Ma). Indeed, one of the Csehbánya Formation fossil birds is recognized as a new taxon of large enantiornithine, an avisaurid apparently similar in its largely unfused foot morphology to the Argentine Soroavisaurus and to the North American Avisaurus . The Central European records reviewed in this paper highlight the wide distribution of some Late Cretaceous fossil birds, particularly avisaurid enantiornithines, and lead us to a brief discussion of avian biogeography at the end of the Mesozoic. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.