Abstract
A large-sized and almost complete fossil vulture was discovered from the Late Miocene Liushu Formation of Linxia Basin in northwestern China. It is the best-preserved and the most complete fossil vulture yet discovered. The new genus and species Gansugyps linxiaensis is proposed and assigned to the family Accipitridae; morphology and limb proportions suggest it was chiefly an arboreal and soaring bird. It is more advanced than the other two known Miocene vultures from China. This new fossil increases our knowledge of the evolutionary history of vultures, and has implications for reconstructing the paleoecology of this region.
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Acknowledgments
We are greatly indebted to Alan Feduccia for checking and improving the manuscript, two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments, Kenneth E. Campbell and Kimball L. Garrett for their assistance in accessing the specimens of Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Fumin Lei for his help with the skeletal collections at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. We also thank S. Olson for his useful suggestions. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30670223, 30870263).
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Zhang, Z., Zheng, X., Zheng, G. et al. A new Old World vulture (Falconiformes: Accipitridae) from the Miocene of Gansu Province, northwest China. J Ornithol 151, 401–408 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-009-0468-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-009-0468-1