Field of Science

The Patagonian Land Penguin


Take a good look at the figure above, which comes from Mayr (2009). It shows the fossilised tarsometatarsus (the fused long bone of the foot) of a bird from the late Oligocene of Patagonia. This may be one of the single most mysterious specimens in the fossil record. It represents all we know to date of Cladornis pachypus, described by Argentinean palaeontologist Florentino Ameghino in 1895. The appearance of the bone, being very broad and flat relative to its length, is quite bizarre and does not much resemble the tarsometatarsus of any other known bird.

The first thing that should be pointed out is that, whatever it was, Cladornis was a large bird. The specimen is not completely preserved (part of the proximal end of the bone has been lost) but its overall shape suggests that its original length was probably not too much longer than what we have. As such, the tarsometatarsus was probably comparable in length to that of a large pelican. However, it was much wider relative to length than that of a pelican, suggesting the possibility of a more robust bird. The shape of the bone's end indicates that the toes would have been widely spaced, and it may have even approached a zygodactyl arrangement (with two toes pointed rearwards and two forwards, like a modern parrot*) (Mayr 2009).

*When explaining this to my partner, I suggested that he imagine a parrot the size of a pelican. He shuddered and declared that he would rather not.

When Ameghino (1895) first described Cladornis, he interpreted it as an aquatic bird and suggested a relationship to the penguins, albeit in an extinct family Cladornidae (later authors would correct this to Cladornithidae). Later, noticing that it was preserved in association with terrestrial mammals, he declared that it was not marine and was possibly even terrestrial (he also included another species from the same formation, Cruschedula revola, in the Cladornithidae; this species is based on part of a scapula and there is no telling if it was related to Cladornis or not). He still maintained its relationship to the penguins (Ameghino 1906). Ameghino had a bit of a thing for trying to find the origins of all major modern vertebrate groups in his native South America (one of his other works was a book arguing for an Argentinean origin of humans) and it is possible that this was in play here. Nevertheless, the idea of a 'Patagonian land penguin' held sway until Simpson's (1946) review of the fossil penguins, in which he declared that Cladornis was "so very unlike any other penguin, recent or fossil, that I can only consider its reference to that group as erroneous".

This left Cladornis' taxonomic position completely up in the air (the question of whether Cladornis itself could get up in the air is, of course, currently completely unswerable). Wetmore (1951) included Cladornis in the Pelecaniformes, because...reasons. The closest he gave to an explanation was, "The only suggestion that has come to me is that possibly they may belong in the order Pelecaniformes, in which I have placed the family tentatively in the suborder Odontopteryges, where it is located with two others of almost equally uncertain status. This allocation is wholly tentative and is no indication of belief in close relationship in the three diverse groups there assembled". He would later move Cladornis into its own suborder, Cladornithes, and no close relationship to the 'Odontopteryges' (now the Pelagornithidae) has been suggested since. Our current understanding of bird phylogeny finds Wetmore's remaining 'Pelecaniformes' to correspond to three or four independent clades (the Pelecanidae, Suliformes, Phaethontidae and probably Pelagornithidae) so his assignment of Cladornis to this group becomes almost completely uninformative.

Which is pretty much where we're forced to leave things. Mayr (2009) included Cladornis in his chapter on 'land birds', with other taxa discussed in this chapter belonging to the clade Telluraves. However, this was motivated more by a lack of any idea what to do with it otherwise than anything else (it is possible that Cladornis' sub-zygodactyly played a role, but not all zygodactylous birds belong to the Telluraves). I did notice a similarity in proportions between the Cladornis tarsometatarsus and the corresponding bone in the large phorusrhacid Brontornis, making me wonder if anyone had ever compared the two, but this may well be only superficial. Most recent authors have assumed that the Cladornis tarsometatarsus is simply too weird, too unique, for any resolution of its affinities to be reached without first finding more complete remains of the animal.

REFERENCES

Ameghino, F. 1895. Sur les oiseaux fossiles de Patagonie et la aune mammalogique des couches a Pyrotherium. Boletín del Instituto Geográfico Argentino 15 (11–12): 501–602.

Ameghino, F. 1906. Enumeración de los Impennes fósiles de Patagonia y de la Isla Seymour. Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, serie 3, 6: 97–167.

Mayr, G. 2009. Paleogene Fossil Birds. Springer.

Simpson, G. G. 1946. Fossil penguins. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 87 (1): 1–99.

Wetmore, A. 1951. A revised classification for the birds of the world. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 117 (4): 1–22.

3 comments:

  1. Great to see this mystery covered!
    Has this paper come to your attention, by the way?
    http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03115518.2016.1184898?journalCode=talc20
    While it does not mention *Cladornis*, it does pose the former existence of various non-rheid ratites in South America. Certainly *Cladornis* could belong to one of those additional ratite clades. A connection with *Brontornis* and thus phorusrhacids (unless brontornithids are indeed galloanseraean) would be convenient, but phorusrhacids are rather well-known, aren't they? I'd imagine it would have ended up recognised as such if it were one. The semi-zygodactyly is especially intruiging...are we looking at a bird this size that was actually arboreal? If not, a giant representative of something (semi-)zygodactylous would seem likely. Perhaps your giant parrot is not too far off, but a giant piciform or cuckoo would be another option in such a case. I could imagine a pelican-sized toucan just a bit better than a parrot, don't know why...

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  2. I had come across the paper you link to though I hadn't properly read it. Looking over it, my main quibble with it is that it seems to depend heavily on negative evidence: there may not be much reason to assume that these fossil birds are stem-rheids, but there's also little active evidence that they're not stem-rheids.

    I wouldn't read too much into my speculations. The size and apparent robustness of Cladornis lead me to suspect that it might have been flightless, but the evidence is inadequate to really know. As for comparing it to Brontornis, the most important detail to remember there is that I know absolutely nothing about bird osteology, and I'm just grabbing at a random 'huh'.

    Maybe the reason you find a giant toucan easier to imagine is that it wouldn't be entirely dissimilar to a ground hornbill. Mind you, cuckoos are also zygodactylous (they're what I had in mind when I referred to zygodactylous non-Telluraves) and a giant cuckoo is also pretty easy to imagine.

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  3. I prefer to be believe it was a drop-parrot - an arboreal flightless bird that hunted Australian tourists by falling out of trees on them.

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