384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



(see pi. 1), is more like the California condor but is only two-thirds 

 as large. Palaeocrex fax is a large gallinule, apparently between two 

 and three feet in height, and Bafhornis veredus is a species of the 

 shore-bird family of thick-knees or QLdicnemidae (see pi. 1). 

 Bathornis was peculiar in possessing a hind toe which is missing in 

 living representatives of the family. Further species of extinct 

 birds from the Oligocene will be awaited with interest since in that 

 age we may expect the earliest species that are at all closely similar 

 to those living to-day. 



The 23 birds certainly allocated to the Miocene include a consid- 

 erable variety of forms. In Colorado, in the deposits known as the 

 Florissant lake beds, famous for the insect and plant remains 

 that they have produced during the pa.st 50 years, there have been 

 found remains of several birds. A plover has been described as 

 Charadrlus shepj)ardian%is^ while another species, a perching bird 

 about as large as a cedar waxwing or bluebird, has been named 

 Palaeospizcb hella by J. A. Allen (see pi. 9). During a recent ex- 

 amination of the type of the latter species I have found that it is 

 representative of a peculiar family to be known as the Palaeospizi- 

 dae, which belongs near the base of the oscinine subfamily of the 

 perching birds, immediately above the larks, or Alaudidae. 



Another avian species from these same Florissant beds has had a 

 curious history. In 1883 the paleobotanist Lesquereux proposed the 

 name Fontindlis jrnstina for a specimen that he thought was a bit of 

 a fossil moss. In 1916 Knowlton called attention to this species 

 indicating that the fragment on which it was based was not a plant, 

 but was in reality a bit of a feather. Fontinalh must, therefore, be 

 transferred to the avian list where it is placed in the group of hicertae 

 sedis without much hope ever of ascertaining its proper relationships. 



Among other Miocene fossils there have been found in the beds 

 of diatomaceou^ earth at Lompoc, California, a number of birds 

 from which Loye Miller has described six species, a shearwater, three 

 gannets and boobies, an auklet, and a shore-bird. These occur as 

 flattened impressions or silhouettes in beds of nearly pure diatomace- 

 ous material. The species thus far identified are mainly fi^h-eaters, 

 and in part may have come to a shallow Miocene bay to feed on 

 myriads of herrings whose remains abound in the same beds. The 

 most abundant bird is Pufflnus diatomicus^ a shearwater allied to the 

 living blackvented shearwater (see pi. 8), Limosa vanrossemi i^ a 

 godwit much like the modern marbled godwit. Sula tvilletti^ a booby 

 somewhat like the living red-footed booby, is of interest in that it 

 shows the same type of closed external nostril found in modern 

 Sulidae, indicating the great antiquity of this character. The bone 

 in these Lompoc specimens has been so altered that on exposure to 

 the air it crumbles and disappears, leaving only an impression that 



