Fossils and Parrots

When one searches fossil parrot two things appear. One is a report of a partial tarsometatarsus (a bone in the foot) from Siberia that was dated to 16-18 MYA. This is interesting, but it is a very small part of a parrot. A proto-parrot from Wyoming also appears regularly in the search list. This animal, shown below, does not have the familiar head shape of parrots, but does possess other features of parrots and is a whole bird; though it is in the typical bird state of a fossil which is to say that it is nearly pressed entirely flat. This fossil comes from the Fossil Butte Member of Green River Formation and has exceptional preservation, despite the crushed nature of the fossil. If you were to look closely at the neck you can see tracheal rings, the cartilage circles that keep the trachea ("windpipe") open so animals can breathe. Other fossil parrots are known to science, but many of them are associated with much older discoveries, so the papers describing these finds are not high on the search returns. These include parrots found in the Miocene of Nebraska (Wetmore 1926), New Zealand and Australia (latest paper: Worthy et al. 2011), and the Czech Republic (Mlíkovský 1998). There are other papers describing fossil parrots as well, but some describe the same finds mentioned above or are reviews of what we know about the parrot fossil record.

Cyrilavis colburnorum photo by Ian N. Cost