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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



is posterior to it. Below and between the two we find the long, 

 oval obturator foramen, its major axis nearly parallel with the 

 pubic bone, and a deficiency occurring at its posterior arc, where 

 this latter element fails to meet the ischium [pi. 13, fig. 28]. 



The separating and outlying bone about these lateral openings in 

 the pelvis of the Cathartidae is thick and strong, more particularly 

 about the acetabular ring, affording ample support for the powerful 

 pelvic limb of these birds. The pubic style, after passing the 

 obturator foramen, is a moderately wide strip of bone, compressed 

 from side to side, nearly or quite touching for its entire length the 

 lower ischial border, except in Gyparchus, where quite an inter- 

 space seems to exist. Its outer or posterior extremity is produced 

 well beyond the other pelvic bones, to curve inward toward the 

 fellow of the opposite side, from which it is separated by a varying 

 space for the different species. That portion of the outer and 

 lateral surface of the ilium that is posterior to the ischiac foramen, 

 and below the continuation of the gluteal ridge, looks downward 

 and outward; opposed to it, below, is the ischial surface looking 

 upward and outward ; these bones thus form a longitudinal and 

 shallow furrow between them, the anterior extremity being in the 

 posterior arc of the ischiac foramen, the posterior extremity ter- 

 minating in the apex of a notch that is found between the ilium 

 and ischium in the posterior pelvic margin. This notch is acute or 

 angular in the condors and the King vulture, but rounded in the 

 Turkey buzzard and the Carrion crow; it is very distinctive of the 

 Cathartidae, none of the Old World vultures or the Falconidae 

 apparently possessing it — it being absent in all of the representa- 

 tives of the latter family at our hand, and the nearest approach 

 to it being seen in Gypogeranus. 



In closing what we have to say about the pelvis it will be ob- 

 served that Gymnogyps and Sarcorhamphus have the bone most 

 alike, as of course it is in them also the largest. In Catharista the 

 form is somewhat different, and Gyparchus has a pelvis most like 

 it, and here, too, Neophron appears to make the nearest approach, 

 its pelvis resembling that bone in Gyparchus. Cathartes a. 

 septentrio n a 1 i s in this part of its skeleton differs from all 

 the others, it having, as we have seen, a form of vulturinc pelvis 

 peculiarly its own, at once distinguished by the separation of the ilia 

 in front, its broad sacral crista anteriorly, and by its greater width 

 as compared with its depth and length [pi. 12, fig. 27]. 



