A new species of pelican (Aves : Pelecanidae) from the Lower Pliocene of North Carolina and Florida

Abstract

A new species of pelican, Pelecanus schreiberi, is described from rare fossils from the Lower Pliocene Yorktown Formation of North Carolina. Additional material from the nearly contemporaneous Bone Valley Formation in Central Florida is tentatively referred to the same species, which was much larger than any existing New World pelican and so distinctive in some features that it appears to represent an extinct lineage with no living descendents. The holotype is the distal portion of a femur with dense medullary bone indicating a laying female, so the species presumably bred near the type locality.