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A basal bird from the Campanian (Late Cretaceous) of Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta, Canada)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2010

ERIC BUFFETAUT
ERIC BUFFETAUT*
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR 8538, Laboratoire de Géologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
*
*Author for correspondence: eric.buffetaut@sfr.fr
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Abstract

A fragmentary bone from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Campanian) of Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta, Canada), originally described as a pterosaur tibiotarsus, is reinterpreted as the distal end of the tibiotarsus of a basal bird, probably an enantiornithine, on the basis of several distinctive characters. It is the first report of such a bird from the Dinosaur Park Formation and shows that this group was present, together with various more derived ornithurines, in the relatively high-latitude environments of Late Cretaceous western Canada.

Keywords

CretaceousCampanianAlbertaCanadaAvesEnantiornithes
Type
Rapid Communication
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 147 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 469 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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