Questions about Paleocene records of the Bird Asteriornis

[Joseph Fossil]

I'm researching bird fauna from the Danian Paleocene era recently and I have some questions about a particular bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis. It was discovered in late 2019 in Maastrictian deposits of the Maastricht Formation, Cretaceous dating 66.8-66.7 Million Years ago in what is now Belgium and was pretty small in size, about the size of a small duck and weighed only 394 grams when alive.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2096-0

 

Asteriornis is the earliest confirmed Neognathae (a group of birds of which the majority of birds alive today belong to) and it's oldest remains date to just around One Million Years before the Cretaceous-Paleocene Astroid impact wiped out that last of the non-avian dinosaurs. I've seen a lot of people say that this bird species survived the Cretaceous-Paleocene Extinction event into the Paleocene. It's small size and diet of seeds make it a good candidate to have survived the event, but I haven't found any definitive records yet of Asteriornis from the early Paleocene.  

 

What I'm wondering is did Asteriornis survive the Cretaceous-Paleocene Mass Extinction Event 66 Million Years ago and are there any records of Asteriornis that date definitively to the Paleocene era?

[Joseph Fossil]

I'm also curious if anyone on the forum knows if the bird genera Anatalavis, Qinornis, Telmatornis, Tytthostonyx, Conflicto, Novacaesareala, Palaeotringa, and/or Graculavus survived the Cretaceous-Paleocene Mass Extinction Event too?

[DPS Ammonite]

Maybe our resident bird expert knows. @Auspex

 

 

[jpc]

I did a search for Asteriornis on the paleobiology database.  It shows one single occurence... in Belgium of course.

 

The Paleocene record of birds is pretty poor, so I would be surprised if any of these are known from the Paleocene.  That doesn't mean, though, that the asteroid killed them.  Again, very poor Paleocene bird record. 

 

https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/

 

 

[Auspex]

All I can offer is that certainly some Neognaths survived the K-T extinction.

[Joseph Fossil]

19 hours ago, Auspex said:

All I can offer is that certainly some Neognaths survived the K-T extinction.

@Auspex Thanks dude. I appreciate it! Hopefully more fossils of these Cretaceous-Paleocene birds species could be found soon to help solve this!!

[Joseph Fossil]

19 hours ago, jpc said:

I did a search for Asteriornis on the paleobiology database.  It shows one single occurence... in Belgium of course.

 

The Paleocene record of birds is pretty poor, so I would be surprised if any of these are known from the Paleocene.  That doesn't mean, though, that the asteroid killed them.  Again, very poor Paleocene bird record. 

 

https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/

 

 

 

Thanks @jpc! I appreciate it! I was actually a bit surprised at how difficult it would be finding which of these genera actually lived both during the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleocene? I kept getting different answers from fossilworks and mindat, but thanks for letting me know. Hopefully more fossils and found of these Cretaceous-Paleocene birds to see which ones were actual extinction survivors, which ones lived only in the Late Cretaceous, and which ones lived only in the Early Paleocene!