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PLEISTOCENE BIRDS IN BERMUDA 



Bv ALEXANDER WETMORE 

 Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution 



(With Three Plates) 



In July 1956, Dr. David Nicol, then Associate Curator of Inver- 

 tebrate Paleontology and Paleobotany in the U. S. National Museum, 

 visited Bermuda to collect mollusks and other material, traveling 

 under funds supplied by the National Science Foundation and the 

 Walcott Fund of the Smithsonian Institution. On July 21 he worked 

 in a Quaternary fossil deposit in the H. Bernard Wilkinson Quarry, 

 south and west of Coney Island, Hamilton Parish, Bermuda. At this 

 site, which is one that had been located by Dr. Heinz Lowenstam of 

 the California Institute of Technology during his studies of the 

 geology of the islands, in addition to fossil mollusks Dr. Nicol col- 

 lected 30 fragments of bones of birds. Among these there were parts 

 of a crane-like bird, unlike any living species, and wholly unexpected 

 from this island locality. 



In view of the importance of this discovery. Dr. W. H. Sutcliffe, 

 Jr., Director of the Bermuda Biological Station, kindly arranged to 

 have a further collection made for me in the cave where the first 

 specimens had been obtained. Subsequently, in 1958, agreement was 

 made with David B. Wingate to make a search for further avian 

 material. 



The bones, with quantities of shells of land mollusks, were im- 

 bedded in a calcareous tufa, fairly soft in texture, so that they were 

 cleaned without particular difficulty. Their preservation is unusual 

 as, in many, lines of muscle attachment and the most delicate processes 

 are intact. Some of the specimens, in fact, are as perfect as the 

 corresponding parts in the modern skeletons with which they have 

 been compared. 



The actual age of such deposits on Bermuda may be established by 

 the detailed geological studies that Dr. Lowenstam has had underway. 

 It is certain that they are old, and for the present it is my assumption 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 140, NO. 2 



