Towards the complete bird - the skull of the middle Eocene Messel lithornithid (Aves, Lithornithidae)

摘要

A skull of a lithornithid bird is described from the middle Eocene fossil site Messel in Germany. The specimen is assigned to the same species as a recently reported postcranial skeleton from the same locality, and confirms the occurrence of lithornithids in Messel. The new fossil shows that the Messel lithornithid had a proportionally small skull, which supports its classification into the taxon Lithornis. The Messel lithornithid constitutes the geologically youngest record of the Lithomithidae, but the currently known material still does not allow an unambiguous taxonomic assignment at the species-level.