2010/04/19 by Gareth J. Dyke, Attila Ősi · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Geological and Geochemical Analysis
paper · doi:10.1002/gj.1209
openalex publication_date 2010/04/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Abstract 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.