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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    i. e., Meleagris antiquus; or, in other words, I doubt the propriety of basing a new species of fossil turkey upon “ the distal end of a right humerus,” as Professor Marsh has done in this case. Nor do the characters he describes for this species, as being diagnostic, hold true. It is a positive detriment to science, in my estimation, to create new species of fossil birds upon the distal ends of long bones; and surely no assistance whatever to those who honestly endeavor to gain some idea of the avian species that really existed during prehistoric times. So far as M. altus and M. ccler are con- cerned, I can only say that I know nothing of them from personal examination of the material upon which the species are based, and this has been refused me.” “In the case of Meleagris altus, Professor Marsh says that the length of the tarso-metatarsal is ecpial to 176.5 mm. (p. 261), and the present writer says that it is by no means uncommon to find the same bones in adult specimens of M. gallopavo fully of that length, if not longer. The other characters Professor Marsh enu- merates, may each and all be due to sexual and individual variations.” “In the case of Meleagris celer, this likewise holds true; and in regard to the statement that the “ remains preserved indicate a bird about half the bulk of M. altus,” may be said with equal truth of M. gallopavo, in which species a similar discrepancy in size also exists between sexes and between the old and young.” “ In other words, I am of the opinion, so far as I am able to judge from his descriptions, that when Professor Marsh described his three extinct and new species of Meleagris, he had nothing more or less before him than the very meagre and fragmentary remains of M. gallopavo.”1 As pointed out below, these birds may not have been true turkeys at all. It is clear, from Professor Marsh’s description, that he attempted to establish Meleagris antiqua upon an imperfect distal extremity of a right humerus, and M. celer upon the fossil bones enumerated below. It has already been pointed out in a previous paragraph that I found not a few fossil bones of Meleagris g. silvestris in the material which was taken from the Bone Caves of Tennessee, 1 The American Journal of Science, ser. 3, ii, 1871, 126. (Meleaoris antiqua.) The title is on page 120.
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