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A CHECK-LIST OF THE FOSSIL AND PRE- 

 HISTORIC BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA 

 AND THE WEST INDIES 



By ALEXANDER WETMORE 

 Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution 



The present check-list is an ampHfication of the one published in 

 the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in 1940 (vol. 99, No, 4) 

 and is complete to November 1955 so far as records have come to at- 

 tention. To the present time these check-lists have covered the area of 

 the check-list of living birds of the American Ornithologists' Union, 

 namely North America north of Mexico, with the addition of Baja 

 California. It has seemed desirable now to include also the records, 

 comparatively few in number, for Mexico and the West Indies, since 

 this information is complementary and otherwise is available only in 

 widely scattered sources. Various of these latter records are of species 

 of birds described from bones found during archeological excavations 

 in Indian kitchen middens of pre-Columbian age or during the ex- 

 ploration of caverns. The species concerned have long been extinct, so 

 that the only knowledge regarding them is embodied in their skeletal 

 remains. No living examples have been known. It is useful therefore 

 to include them for reference with other species of fossil status, since 

 they do not figure in check-lists of existing birds and since possibly 

 they may be encountered at some future time in true fossil form. They 

 have the same pertinence therefore as species described from Pleisto- 

 cene beds whose bones have been found subsequently in Recent 

 deposits. 



The considerable amount of information now available has allowed 

 more detail relative to geological formations from which the various 

 records have come, and these data have been brought down to date as 

 far as practicable. In this I have had the advice in certain cases of 

 Druid Wilson, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and also have profited 

 from discussions with Dr. C. Wythe Cooke of the same service, par- 

 ticularly as to formations of the southeastern United States. 



In the records from the Pleistocene there has been sufficient study 

 of the deposits of this age known from the western United States to 

 allow indication of position, as to whether they are considered early or 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 131, NO. 5 



