Fossils of New Vulture Species Found in Cuba

[Oxytropidoceras]

Fossils of New Vulture Species Found in Cubaby

Enrico de Lazaro, Previous, Sci News, Jan 13, 2021

 

"A new species of small vulture that lived during the 

Quaternary period in the Greater Antilles has been 

identified from fossils found in western Cuba."

 

The paper is:

 

Suárez, W. and Olson, S.L., 2020. A new fossil 

vulture (Cathartidae: Cathartes) from Quaternary

 asphalt and cave deposits in Cuba. Bulletin of

the British Ornithologists’ Club, 140(3), pp.335-343.

 

Yours,

Paul H.

[DD1991]

Although Cuba, like the US, Haiti, and Venezuela, has its share of liberation heroes (Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, Maximo Gomez, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Guillermon Moncada), and it was until the 2010s seen by many baby boomer Americans as synonymous with Fidel, most people tend to forget that Cuba once boasted prehistoric animals, including pterosaurs, sloths, birds, plesiosaurs, and thalattosuchians. Recall that Nesodactylus was described by Edwin Colbert a decade after the Castros took power in Cuba, but this is because the only specimen of this pterosaur was found in 1929, three decades before Fulgencio Batista was ousted.