0000000000850809
AUTHOR
Eric Buffetaut
A new giant ground bird from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France
New discoveries afford a much better knowledge of the large birds previously reported from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France on the basis of a single synsacrum fragment. An incomplete pelvis consisting of the synsacrum with part of the ilia is used to define a new taxon of bird, Gargantuavis philoinos , to which a femur is also referred. This bird is characterized by its very large size (comparable to that of an ostrich), a broad pelvis with an anteriorly placed acetabulum, and a short robust femur. The occurrence of this very large, flightless, bird in the Late Cretaceous shows that, contrary to widespread opinion, the evolution of large terrestrial birds was not simply the result of…
A terminal Cretaceous giant pterosaur from the French Pyrenees
A very large pterosaur cervical vertebra is described from the Upper Maastrichtian deposits of Mérigon, in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. It resembles the vertebrae of Quetzalcoatlus, from the Maastrichtian of Texas, more than those of Arambourgiania, from the Maastrichtian of Jordan. The estimated wing span of the Mérigon pterosaur is close to 9 m, which makes it one of the largest known flying creatures. Giant pterosaurs still had a wide geographical distribution at the end of Maastrichtian time, which is not suggestive of a declining group, although it is difficult to obtain an accurate estimate of taxonomic diversity of terminal Cretaceous pterosaurs on the basis of available dat…