Contributions to avian paleontology / by R.W. Shufeldt.

  • Robert Wilson Shufeldt
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Contributions to avian paleontology / by R.W. Shufeldt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the 25th of April, 1912, Dr. George F. Eaton wrote me that the material, upon which M. alius is based, “ is in the Peabody Museum (type) with other types of fossil Mcleagridoe.” Cope’s description of M. superbus occurs in the Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc. (N. S. xiv. Pt. 1, 1870, 239); it being a very careful and detailed piece of work, based on the material before him, which is said to have consisted of “ a nearly perfect right tibia, an imperfect left one, a left femur with the condyles broken off, and a right coracoid bone, with the distal articular extremity imperfect.” In my opinion, there would be ample here to establish a fossil spe- cies of bird, especially if placed in the hands of a good comparative avian osteologist. Personally, I have never seen the material upon which M. superba was established; but, judging from its character and its amount, I am strongly inclined to believe that Professor Cope had a fossil American Turkey before him,— at least the fossil remains of one. Professor Marsh would never allow me to examine and compare the fossil bones which he described as those he suspected of belong- ing to extinct turkeys, and I never did so during his life-time. Several years after he had attempted to establish M. altus (now known to be only a synonym of M. superba Cope), I informed him that I was not prepared to accept his conclusions in the matter; and finally it came to pass that I published in a paper what I desired to set forth on the subject. This paper was entitled “ On Fossil Bird-bones Obtained by Expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania from the Bone Caves of Tennessee” (American Naturalist, July, 1897, 645-650); and, in connection with other things said in it, I pointed out that among the bones found, many of them belonged to M. g. sylvestris. Admitting the establishment of Meleagris superba of Cope, we have now to discuss the two other species. These are, as stated above, Meleagris antiqua (1871), and Meleagris ccler (1872), both recorded by Professor O. C. Marsh. In my above cited paper on the Tennessee fossil bird-bones, p. 648, I have commented on the validity of these species as follows: “Professor Marsh at different times has described three species of alleged extinct Turkeys, viz., Meleagris antiquus, M. alius and M. celer; but I am very sceptical indeed in regard to the validity of the first-named,
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