Plesiocathartes

Plesiocathartes; Temporal range: Eocene to Oligocene PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Leptosomiformes
Genus:	† Plesiocathartes ; Gaillard, 1908
Type species
	†P. europaeus; Gaillard, 1908
Other species
	†P. gaillardiCrusafont & Villalta, 1955; †P. majorWeidig, 2006; †P. insolitipes Mayr & Kitchener, 2022; †P. kelleri Mayr, 2002; †P. wyomingensisWeidig, 2006;

Last updated March 05, 2025

Plesiocathartes is an extinct genus of birds that lived during the Eocene to Oligocene period. It currently presents 5 species from Europe and North America. It was originally described related to New World vultures, but recent studies have uncovered that the genus was more closely related to the cuckoo-roller from Madagascar.^[3]

Distribution

P. insolitipes fossils are known from Walton-on-the-Naze, a site stratigraphically located in the Walton Member of the London Clay Formation of southeastern England.^[4]

References

↑ C. Gaillard. 1908. Les oiseaux des phosphorites du Quercy [The birds from the Quercy phosphorites]. Annales de l'Université de Lyon, nouvelle séries. 1. Sciences, Médecine 23:1-178
↑ "PBDB Taxon".
↑ Mayr, G. (2002). "A new species of Plesiocathartes (Aves: ?Leptosomidae) from the Middle Eocene of Messel, Germany". PaleoBios. 22: 10–20.
↑ Mayr, Gerald; Kitchener, Andrew C. (30 November 2022). "New species from the early Eocene London Clay suggest an undetected early Eocene diversity of the Leptosomiformes, an avian clade that includes a living fossil from Madagascar". Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments. 103 (3): 585–608. doi:10.1007/s12549-022-00560-0. ISSN 1867-1594 . Retrieved 4 March 2025– via Springer Nature Link.

R. L. Carroll. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution 1-698
J. F. de Villalta. 1963. Las aves fósiles del Mioceno español. Boletin de la Real Socieded Española de Historia Natural 61:263-285
K. Lambrecht. 1933. Handbuch der Palaeornithologie. 1-1024
G. Mayr. 2005. The Paleogene fossil record of birds in Europe. Biological Reviews 80:513-542
G. Mayr and T. Smith. 2019. A diverse bird assemblage from the Ypresian of Belgium furthers knowledge of early Eocene avifaunas of the North Sea Basin. Neus Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Palaontologie, Abhandlungen 291(3):253-281

This Leptosomiformes-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] C. Gaillard. 1908. Les oiseaux des phosphorites du Quercy [The birds from the Quercy phosphorites]. Annales de l'Université de Lyon, nouvelle séries. 1. Sciences, Médecine 23:1-178

[2] "PBDB Taxon".

[Mayr2002-3] Mayr, G. (2002). "A new species of Plesiocathartes (Aves: ?Leptosomidae) from the Middle Eocene of Messel, Germany". PaleoBios. 22: 10–20.

[4] Mayr, Gerald; Kitchener, Andrew C. (30 November 2022). "New species from the early Eocene London Clay suggest an undetected early Eocene diversity of the Leptosomiformes, an avian clade that includes a living fossil from Madagascar". Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments. 103 (3): 585–608. doi:10.1007/s12549-022-00560-0. ISSN 1867-1594 . Retrieved 4 March 2025– via Springer Nature Link.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

Plesiocathartes

Contents

Distribution

References

Further reading