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Large euenantiornithine birds from the Cretaceous of southern France, North America and Argentina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2007

C. A. WALKER ,
E. BUFFETAUT  and
G. J. DYKE
C. A. WALKER
Affiliation:
Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum London, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD, London, UK
E. BUFFETAUT
Affiliation:
CNRS, UMR 5125, (Paléoenvironnements et Paléobiosphère), 16 cour du Liégat, 75013 Paris, France
G. J. DYKE
Affiliation:
School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland
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Abstract

We review historical approaches to the systematics of Enantiornithes, the dominant birds of the second half of the Mesozoic, and describe the forelimb remains of a new Cretaceous euenantiornithine. This taxon is known on the basis of fossil specimens collected from southern France, Argentina and the United States; such a wide geographical distribution is uncharacteristic for Enantiornithes as most taxa are known from single localities. Fossils from the Massecaps locality close to the village of Cruzy (Hérault, southern France), in combination with elements from New Mexico (USA) and from the Argentine locality of El Brete (Salta Province) testify to the global distribution of large flighted euenantiornithine birds in the Late Cretaceous. We discuss the systematics and taxonomy of additional isolated bones of Enantiornithes that were collected from the Argentine El Brete locality in the 1970s; the presence of these flying birds in Cretaceous rocks on both sides of the equator, in both northern and southern hemispheres, further demonstrates the ubiquity of this avian lineage by the latter stages of the Mesozoic.

Keywords

palaeontologyanatomyMesozoicFranceArgentinaNew Mexicoflight
Type
Original Article
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 144 , Issue 6 , November 2007 , pp. 977 - 986
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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