The Accipitridae, one of the four families within the order Accipitriformes, are a family of small to large birds with strongly hooked bills and variable morphology based on diet. They feed on a range of prey items from insects to medium-sized mammals, with a number feeding on carrion and a few feeding on fruit. The Accipitridae have a cosmopolitan distribution, being found on all the world's continents and a number of oceanic island groups. Some species are migratory.
The Gruiformes are an order containing a considerable number of living and extinct bird families, with a widespread geographical diversity. Gruiform means "crane-like".
Anas is a genus of dabbling ducks. It includes the pintails, most teals, and the mallard and its close relatives. It formerly included additional species but following the publication of a molecular phylogenetic study in 2009 the genus was spit into four separate genera. The genus now contains 31 living species. The name Anas is the Latin for "duck".
Teratornithidae is an extinct family of very large birds of prey that lived in North and South America from the Late Oligocene to Late Pleistocene. They include some of the largest known flying birds.
Osteodontornis is an extinct seabird genus. It contains a single named species, Osteodontornis orri, which was described quite exactly one century after the first species of the Pelagornithidae was. O. orri was named after then-recently deceased naturalist Ellison Orr.
Neocathartes is an extinct genus of cariamid bird. It contains a single named species, Neocathartes grallator, known from some fossil bones found in Late Eocene Washakie Formation deposits of Wyoming. Similar bones have been recovered from the Early Eocene Willwood Formation. The genus originally set up by Wetmore, Eocathartes, was already in use for an unrelated fossil bird from Germany, so a new genus had to be established for the Wyoming fossil.
The Pelagornithidae, commonly called pelagornithids, pseudodontorns, bony-toothed birds, false-toothed birds or pseudotooth birds, are a prehistoric family of large seabirds. Their fossil remains have been found all over the world in rocks dating between the Late Paleocene and the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary.
The genus Cathartes includes medium-sized to large carrion-feeding birds in the New World vulture (Cathartidae) family. The three species currently classified in this genus occur widely in the Americas.
Storrs Lovejoy Olson is an American biologist and ornithologist who spent his career at the Smithsonian Institution, retiring in 2008. One of the world's foremost avian paleontologists, he is best known for his studies of fossil and subfossil birds on islands such as Ascension, St. Helena and Hawaii. His early higher education took place at Florida State University in 1966, where he obtained a B.A. in Biology, and the University of Florida, where he received an M.S. in Biology. Olson's doctoral studies took place at Johns Hopkins University, in what was then the School of Hygiene and Public Health. He has been married to fellow paleornithologist Helen F. James.
Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils. This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised feces (coprolites), palynomorphs and chemical residues. Because humans have encountered fossils for millennia, paleontology has a long history both before and after becoming formalized as a science. This article records significant discoveries and events related to paleontology that occurred or were published in the year 1976.
Palaeochenoides is a genus of the prehistoric pseudotooth birds of somewhat doubtful validity. These were probably rather close relatives of either pelicans and storks, or of waterfowl, and are here placed in the order Odontopterygiformes to account for this uncertainty.
Eonessa is an enigmatic genus of bird possibly belonging to bird order Gruiformes and which consists of the single species Eonessa anaticula.
Cruschedula is an enigmatic bird genus considered to be nomen dubium which consists of the single species Cruschedula revola.
Branta rhuax is an extinct goose endemic to the island of Hawai'i. It was initially described into the monotypic genus Geochen but assigned to Branta by Storrs L. Olson in 2013 after reexamination of the subfossil material.
Gymnogyps varonai, sometimes called the Cuban condor, is an extinct species of large New World vultures in the family Cathartidae. G. varonai is related to the living California condor, G. californianus and the extinct G. kofordi either of which it may have evolved from. The species is solely known from fossils found in the late Pleistocene to early Holocene tar seep deposits in Cuba. G. varonai may have preyed upon carcasses from large mammals such as ground sloths.
Bathornis is an extinct lineage of birds related to modern day seriemas, that lived in North America about 37–20 million years ago. Like the closely related and also extinct phorusrhacids, it was a flightless predator, occupying predatory niches in environments classically considered to be dominated by mammals. It was a highly diverse and successful genus, spanning a large number of species that occurred from the Priabonian Eocene to the Burdigalian Miocene epochs.
Oscar Paulino Arredondo de la Mata was a Cuban paleontologist. He described a number of birds and mammals of the Quaternary Period from fossils obtained from Cuban caves. He has been called the "father of Cuban vertebrate paleontology".
Gymnogyps howardae is an extinct large species of New World vultures in the family Cathartidae. Gymnogyps howardae is known only from the Late Pleistocene (Lujanian) asphalt deposits known as the Talara Tar Seeps, near to Talara, northwestern Peru. It lived about 126-12 thousand years ago.
