€f)ax\ei B. anb iHarp ^aux Maltott i^estearcf) Jfunb 

 NOTES ON FOSSIL AND SUBFOSSIL BIRDS 



By ALEXANDER WETMORE 



Research Associate 

 Stttifhsoiiian Institution 



The following pages cover several studies on fossil and sub fossil 

 birds, based mainly on material in the U.S. National Museum. The 

 collection from the Pleistocene of Augusta County, Va., has come 

 through the kindness of John E. Guilday of the Carnegie Mu- 

 seum. The bones from Bermuda were collected for the Smithsonian 

 Institution by David B. Wingate. 



I. AN UPPER CRETACEOUS BIRD RELATED TO THE IBISES 



In the summer of 1958, Dr. Shelton P. Applegate, now at State 

 College, Arkansas, collected a broken humerus of a bird in Greene 

 County, west-central Alabama, that appears related to the storks and 

 ibises of the order Ciconiiformes. According to data supplied by 

 Dr. Applegate, the specimen came from Hewletts farm, 3 miles 

 northeast of the town of Boligee, where it was found in the farther 

 side of a series of gullies that lie to the west of the county road, 

 before this reaches the farmhouse entrance. The location, in the 

 Mooreville formation of the Selma chalk, was about 10 feet below 

 the Areola limestone. 



The form of the humerus indicates a species about half the size 

 of the living white ibis Eudocimus albus. 



PLEGADORNIS gen. nov. 



Diagnosis. — A fossil storklike bird, with the distal end of the 

 humerus flattened, ectepicondyle long, and the brachial depression 

 shallow and relatively large. Characters in detail those of the only 

 known species, Plegadornis antecessor, the type of the genus. 



PLEGADORNIS ANTECESSOR sp. nov. 



Characters. — Known from a fragmentary left humerus that is 

 generally similar to living species of the suborder Ciconiae ; much 

 smaller than the smallest of living forms of the suborder (half the 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 145, NO. 2 



