Fossil of Giant Ancient Sea Predator Discovered

Anomalocaridids had long, spiny head limbs presumably used to snag
prey, and a series of blade-like filaments in segments across the animal's
back, which scientists think might have functioned as gills.
(Credit: Esben Horn)

ScienceDaily (May 26, 2011) — Paleontologists have discovered that a group of remarkable ancient sea creatures existed for much longer and grew to much larger sizes than previously thought, thanks to extraordinarily well-preserved fossils discovered in Morocco.

The creatures, known as anomalocaridids, were already thought to be the largest animals of the Cambrian period, known for the "Cambrian Explosion" that saw the sudden appearance of all the major animal groups and the establishment of complex ecosystems about 540 to 500 million years ago. Fossils from this period suggested these marine predators grew to be about two feet long. Until now, scientists also thought these strange invertebrates -- which had long spiny head limbs presumably used to snag worms and other prey, and a circlet of plates around the mouth -- died out at the end of the Cambrian.

Now a team led by former Yale researcher Peter Van Roy (now at Ghent University in Belgium) and Derek Briggs, director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, has discovered a giant fossilized anomalocaridid that measures one meter (more than three feet) in length. The anomalocaridid fossils reveal a series of blade like filaments in each segment across the animal's back, which scientists think might have functioned as gills.

In addition, the creature dates back to the Ordovician period, a time of intense biodiversification that followed the Cambrian, meaning these animals existed for 30 million years longer than previously realized.

"The anomalocaridids are one of the most iconic groups of Cambrian animals," Briggs said. "These giant invertebrate predators and scavengers have come to symbolize the unfamiliar morphologies displayed by organisms that branched off early from lineages leading to modern marine animals, and then went extinct. Now we know that they died out much more recently than we thought."

The specimens are just part of a new trove of fossils from Morocco that includes thousands of examples of soft-bodied marine fauna dating back to the early Ordovician period, 488 to 472 million years ago. Because hard shells fossilize and are preserved more readily than soft tissue, scientists had an incomplete and biased view of the marine life that existed during the Ordovician period before the recent discoveries in Morocco. The animals found in Morocco inhabited a muddy sea floor in fairly deep water, and were trapped by sediment clouds that buried them and preserved their soft bodies.

"The new discoveries in Morocco indicate that animals characteristic of the Cambrian, such as the anomalocaridids, continued to have a considerable impact on the biodiversity and ecology of marine communities many millions of years later," Van Roy said.

The paper appears in the May 26 issue of the journal Nature.

This research was supported by a National Geographic Society Research and Exploration grant and by Yale University.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525131709.htm

Thylacine lives up to its tiger moniker

Andrew Darby, Hobart
May 5, 2011

CLOSE study of thylacine leg bones has pointed to the lost marsupial's hunting technique, showing it probably behaved more like a tiger than a wolf.

Work on the thylacine's tell-tale elbow joint by US scientists found it was flexible enough to subdue prey after a surprise attack, indicating it was a sudden ambush predator.

The shape of the joint contrasts with those of dingoes and wolves, which have less foreleg movement, which is why they may rely on lengthy pack hunts, said biologists at Brown University, Rhode Island.

Scientists have been forced to forensically reconstruct the life of the unique striped marsupial, which was driven to extinction by hunters in Tasmania last century.

With a head like a large dog and a body striped like a cat, known as both the marsupial wolf and Tasmanian tiger, the animal's hunting habits were poorly documented.

In a study published in Biology Letters yesterday, Brown University researcher Borja Figueirido compared the bones of the thylacine with 31 other mammals.

Previous research pointed to the elbow joint as a clue to predatory habits because it showed whether the animal was built for flexibility and dexterity in handling prey, or for a chase.

''It's a very subtle thing,'' said Christine Janis, professor of biology in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown. ''You never would think that the shape of just one bone would mean so much.''

Examining the bones, the researchers found the thylacine's humerus, or upper ''arm'' bone, was oval and elongated at the end closest to the elbow, implying the foreleg bones, the radius and ulna, were separated. That meant the thylacine would have been able to rotate the lower leg so that the foot pad faced up like a cat's.

Professor Janis said the thylacine's hunting tactics appeared to be a unique mix. "I don't think there's anything like it around today," she said. "It's sort of like a cat-like fox."

David Owen, author of the 2003 natural history Thylacine, told The Age conflicting accounts of the animal's speed and agility meant its hunting behaviour was still subject to conjecture. ''This work lends weight to it being an ambush predator, but I'm not convinced that it's not a pursuit predator by any means.''

http://www.theage.com.au/national/thylacine-lives-up-to-its-tiger-moniker-20110504-1e8fh.html

What Exactly Was The Australian Thylacine?

Though highly similar in their skull anatomy, specialized for a carnivorous diet, the thylacine, front, and the dingo very likely had different hunting styles. Researchers analyzing skeletons of the forelimbs found important differences
CREDIT: Carl Buell

Posted on: Wednesday, 4 May 2011, 09:45 CDT

The thylacine had the head and body of a dog, but its striped coat resembled a cat and it carried its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. These enigmatic, iconic creatures of Australia and Tasmania have been given conflicting names such as the “marsupial wolf” and the “Tasmanian tiger.”

Researchers at Brown University may have discovered the answer as to what type of creature the extinct thylacine was.

Bones of the thylacines, along with other dog-like and cat-like animals such as pumas, jackals, wolves and Tasmania devils, were examined by the researchers. Their findings concluded that these creatures were Tasmanian tigers, which meant that they were more like cats than dogs, and were clearly a marsupial.

The thylacine was able to rotate its arm so that the palm faced upwards, similar to a cat, reports BBC News. This allowed the animal to increase the amount of arm and paw movement to help the Tasmanian tiger subdue its prey after an ambush.

Borja Figueirido, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and lead author says, "We provide quantitative support to the suspicions of earlier researchers that the thylacine was not a pursuit predator. Although there is no doubt that the thylacine diet was similar to that of living wolves, we find no compelling evidence that they hunted similarly."

The research, published in Biology Letters, shows that the extinct thylacine was a “solitary, ambush-style predator, with hunting skills that are unlike those of wolves or dog-like species that hunt in packs and pursue their prey over distances.

Dog-like animals such as wolves and dingos have a more restrictive arm-hand movement, which has their paws fixed at a palm-down position; therefore, showing that their hunting strategy is to pursue a prey in packs rather than by ambush.

But this in not all-encompassing, since cats like the cheetah use speed to catch its meal and dog-like foxes rely on ambushing their prey.

Christine Janis, co-author and professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown, says that the thylacine’s hunting method seems to be a unique mix.

“I don’t think there’s anything like it around today. It’s sort of like a cat-like fox.”

After millions of years of existence in Australia, the Tasmanian tiger ended its species with the final thylacine named Benjamin, who died in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania in 1936.

The extinction of the thylacines probably began about 40,000 years ago when humans started to settle in Australia, and the dingo, a small, dog-like creature, was introduced into the environment around 4,000 years ago.

Humans most likely disrupted thylacine habitat and probably even its food sources, but the dingo’s role in the disappearance of the Tasmanian tiger is still debatable, say researchers, since the hunting habits of these two animals are different from one another.

"Dingoes were more like the final straw [to the Tasmanian tigers' demise in continental Australia]," Janis says, "Because they weren't in the same niche. It's not just that a dingo was a placental version of a thylacine."

Eventually, the dingo-free island of Tasmania became the thylacines final living environment, where there was an effort to eradicate the animals in the 19th and 20th centuries.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2041005/what_exactly_was_the_australian_thylacine/index.html 

See also: Thylacine hunting behavior - A Case of crying wolf

Biggest-Ever Bunny Didn't Hop, Had No Enemies

A newly found species of rabbit, Nuralagus rex, weighed in at over 26.4

pounds and lived three to five million years ago on the small island of Minorca.

Meike Köhler

No floppy-eared Easter-type bunny, this rabbit had small ears, smallish eyes and enormous heft.

By Jennifer Viegas
Mon Mar 21, 2011 03:00 PM ET

THE GIST

• The world's largest known rabbit lived three to five million years ago on the island of Minorca.
• It weighed over 26.4 pounds, had no enemies, and did not hop.
• The rabbit exemplifies what's known as the "island rule."

An enormous bunny that lived three to five million years ago was so hefty -- six times the size of most rabbits today -- that it didn't hop and had no enemies.

The new species, dubbed the Minorcan King of the Rabbits (Nuralagus rex), weighed in at over 26.4 pounds and lived on the small island of Minorca.

"N. rex was a very robust and peculiar rabbit," project leader Josep Quintana told Discovery News. "Surely he was a very calm and peaceful animal that moved with slow, but powerful, movements."

Quintana, a scientist at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology, and colleagues Meike Kohler and Salvador Moya-Sola describe the giant fossil rabbit in a Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology paper. They believe the rabbit lost the ability to hop, because the long, springy spine typical of modern bunnies was replaced by a short, stiff backbone.

The researchers think N. rex spent most of its days peacefully digging, searching for roots and tubers to eat.

"The ancestors of N. rex arrived at Minorca during the Messinian crisis 5.3 million years ago," Quintana said. "During this geological time, the Mediterranean Sea dried up and the Balearic islands connected with the surrounding mainland (of Europe and Africa), so the proto-Nuralagus rex arrived walking to Minorca."

When the seawater returned and Minorca returned to its island status, the rabbit found itself with no predators. Over time, it grew to become 10 times the size of its now-extinct mainland cousin. Other inhabitants of the island at the time included a bat, a large dormouse and a giant tortoise.

With no need for defense, the rabbit lost visual and hearing acuity. Its eye socket reduced in size over time, as did its ears.

The changes, especially the increase in body size, add to the growing evidence for what's known as "the island rule." Simply put, this states that when on islands, big animals often tend to become smaller and small animals frequently tend to grow larger.

On the small side of that equation, other islands have been home to tiny elephants and even, in the case of Homo floresiensis, tiny humans.

"It is as if nature experimented with form and function, not without a wicked sense of humor," Lucja Fostowicz-Frelik, an American Museum of Natural History paleontologist, told Discovery News.

Fostowicz-Frelik continued that the newly found rabbit "is just another manifestation of the island rule ... We know that their closest relations, rodents, did produce some gigantic forms, not necessarily on islands, which averaged several hundred kilos. Now we see that the lagomorphs (the animal order that includes rabbits, hares and pikas) did not escape the trend."

Brian Kraatz, an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, agrees.

"There is an underlying assumption that rabbits appeared some 40 million years ago and have been perfectly happy to stay just about the same," Kraatz told Discovery News. "This new species is interesting in that it's quite different from what we know of living or fossil rabbits. Aside from its incredibly large size, its hind legs are rather short, not so good for hopping."

He added, "It's unclear whether their feet would have been decent good luck charms."

Bad luck affected the rabbit when a climate cooling likely ruined comfortable living conditions for the species on its island. The researchers suspect this climate change led to the rabbit's extinction.

Through the recent science, however, it lives on, with more studies of its fossils in the works. Quintana also hopes this rabbit "king" will become a popular mascot for the island.

He explained, "I would like to use N. rex to lure students and visitors to Minorca!"

Half a dodo found in museum drawer

Staff at Grant Museum surprised to discover remains of extinct bird amid mass of crocodile bones during move to new home

Maev Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 18.14 GMT

Half a dodo has turned up in an Edwardian wooden box in a drawer at one of Britain's oldest natural history collections.

Not much surprises the staff at the Grant Museum, where the contents include an old sweet jar full to the brim with pickled baby moles, their paws pressed pathetically against the glass, and the skull and antlers of an extinct species of giant deer which some academics bought straight off the wall of an Irish pub.

However, even they were a little startled when the dodo turned up, stored with a mass of crocodile bones.

"They do have common characteristics, crocodiles and birds," Jack Ashby, the museum's learning access manager, said. "It was an understandable mistake."

The dodo remains emerged as the Grant, part of University College London, moved its 70,000-item collection to a new home in an Edwardian former medical library.

It may look like a collection of blackened bones, but the dodo is an exceptional find. The afterlife of the disastrously delicious flightless bird in museums is almost as tragic as its extinction in its native Mauritius in the 17th century.

No complete specimen survives, although in the 19th century at least two were destroyed by curators who decided they were in unacceptably poor condition, including the one at the Natural History Museum in Oxford that inspired Lewis Carroll's dodo in Alice in Wonderland.

The bones will be displayed alongside another treasure of the collection, the Grant's quagga – an extinct South African relative of the horse, resembling a zebra. The old catalogue said the collection held two zebras: it turned out that one was a donkey, and the other was the quagga, one of only seven almost complete skeletons in the world. (Almost complete because it lost a left hind leg, probably when the collection was moved to a Welsh slate mine during the Blitz.)

The catalogue has been tormenting the curators: the oldest entries merely say what the object is, not how it got there. College legend says their Galapagos tortoise came back on the Beagle with Charles Darwin, but they can't prove it. The cut marks on the inside of the shell strongly suggest the rest of the poor creature went into the stew pot on board.

The Grant, founded in 1827 as a teaching collection at UCL, is the last university zoological museum in London, and includes many items that were orphaned when their original homes closed. It still holds many specimens prepared by Robert Edmond Grant, the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in England.

Other finds include the lower jaw of a crocodile, now reunited with its skull which has been on display for a century, and a fossil pterosaur assumed to be a plaster cast, which to the surprise of staff turned out to be the real thing – and a rare specimen.

The new displays, lining the walls and gallery up to the ceiling, already look as if they've been there for a century, apart from interactive labels, created with the university's technology department, which will allow visitors to access or even add information through a smartphone, and the iPad on which debates will be launched about contentious issues such as animal experimentation and racial distinctions.

"People are fiercely protective of this museum," manager Natasha McEnroe said. "They loved the old fashioned cases jammed full of specimens, and they didn't want a thing changed. But this new space is so beautiful, we hope people will love it even more."

The Grant Museum reopens to the public on March 15. Admission is free.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/21/dodo-found-grant-museum-drawer

'Dawn runner' casts light on birth of the dinosaurs

Eodromaeus ("dawn runner") was discovered in
230-million-year old rocks in the foothills of the Andes

By Neil Bowdler, Science reporter, BBC News
13 January 2011

Scientists have unveiled one of the earliest dinosaurs yet found, an agile meat-eater from the late Triassic period, some 230 million years ago.

Researchers writing in the journal Science say Eodromaeus or "dawn runner" was a small, two-legged creature of not much more than 1.2m in length and 4-6kg in weight.

They reconstructed the dinosaur, a probable ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, from an almost complete set of bones found in the Valley of The Moon, in northwestern Argentina.

Researchers from Argentina and the US first chanced upon fossilised bones belonging to Eodromaeus in 1996, but it has taken them this long to reconstruct the fragments.

Many of the fossils were covered in iron encrustations and required painstaking work under the microscope before casts could be made and a complete skeleton recreated.

The finished creature claim the researchers, is one of the earliest dinosaurs yet discovered, and could represent the beginnings of the theropod line which eventually leads to T.rex.

"It's very close to the root of the dinosaurs," said lead author Professor Paul Sereno of University of Chicago. "This is a two legged animal, pint-sized if you will. It was agile - we know that from the limb proportions, it had grasping hands with really powerful claws.

"It was a predator, we know that from the grasping hands but also especially from the long curved teeth. It was a meat-eater, a specialist and it was in many ways very close to the original meat-eater, the first of the theropod line that would eventually evolve into huge forms like T.rex."
 
Ancestral dinosaur

Eodromaeus has also cast light on an earlier discovery by the same team, another two-legged creature called Eoraptor, for which additional bones have now been collected.

The latter creature has been reclassified by the researchers as an early herbivore rather than a predator, and though similar in appearance to Eodromaeus, they now think Eoraptor could be an early example of the sauropods which eventually spawned such giants as Diplodocus.

"These two dinosaurs actually represent the routes of two incredibly different radiations," said Professor Sereno. "We're looking at just a few years away from that first 'eve' dinosaur and looking at two of the great lineages, which looked very similar at this point."

Even though their descendents may have gone on to great things, neither of the creatures were dominant in their time, and the researchers believe their eventual rise may be down to blind chance, and perhaps some unknown environmental catastrophe.

"Eodromaeus and Eoraptor are punks on the block," said Professor Sereno. "There were other large mammal-like reptiles around that would have been the biggest herbivores and a squat four-legged predator related to alligators that would have swallowed Eodromaeus in one bite."

"Eodromaeus needed some opportunity, some change of events to get the upper hand, so it was extinctions of other animals that were already there which ultimately gave dinosaurs their foot in the door about 200 million years ago."

Dr Paul Barrett, research scientist with the Natural History Museum, said the research was "very interesting" and could bring us closer to the first dinosaur, which he thinks must have lived very shortly before Eodromaeus.

"We have ideas of what dinosaurs looked like from later members of the groups but they're likely to look more similar as they get closer to that ancestral dinosaur," he said.

These two dinosaurs, he said, could represent two of three great dinosaur lineages - the theropods and the sauropods - the other being the ornithischia group to which creatures such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops belonged.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12175263
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)

'Dawn runner' casts light on birth of the dinosaurs

Eodromaeus ("dawn runner") was discovered in
230-million-year old rocks in the foothills of the Andes

By Neil Bowdler, Science reporter, BBC News
13 January 2011

Scientists have unveiled one of the earliest dinosaurs yet found, an agile meat-eater from the late Triassic period, some 230 million years ago.

Researchers writing in the journal Science say Eodromaeus or "dawn runner" was a small, two-legged creature of not much more than 1.2m in length and 4-6kg in weight.

They reconstructed the dinosaur, a probable ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, from an almost complete set of bones found in the Valley of The Moon, in northwestern Argentina.

Researchers from Argentina and the US first chanced upon fossilised bones belonging to Eodromaeus in 1996, but it has taken them this long to reconstruct the fragments.

Many of the fossils were covered in iron encrustations and required painstaking work under the microscope before casts could be made and a complete skeleton recreated.

The finished creature claim the researchers, is one of the earliest dinosaurs yet discovered, and could represent the beginnings of the theropod line which eventually leads to T.rex.

"It's very close to the root of the dinosaurs," said lead author Professor Paul Sereno of University of Chicago. "This is a two legged animal, pint-sized if you will. It was agile - we know that from the limb proportions, it had grasping hands with really powerful claws.

"It was a predator, we know that from the grasping hands but also especially from the long curved teeth. It was a meat-eater, a specialist and it was in many ways very close to the original meat-eater, the first of the theropod line that would eventually evolve into huge forms like T.rex."
 
Ancestral dinosaur

Eodromaeus has also cast light on an earlier discovery by the same team, another two-legged creature called Eoraptor, for which additional bones have now been collected.

The latter creature has been reclassified by the researchers as an early herbivore rather than a predator, and though similar in appearance to Eodromaeus, they now think Eoraptor could be an early example of the sauropods which eventually spawned such giants as Diplodocus.

"These two dinosaurs actually represent the routes of two incredibly different radiations," said Professor Sereno. "We're looking at just a few years away from that first 'eve' dinosaur and looking at two of the great lineages, which looked very similar at this point."

Even though their descendents may have gone on to great things, neither of the creatures were dominant in their time, and the researchers believe their eventual rise may be down to blind chance, and perhaps some unknown environmental catastrophe.

"Eodromaeus and Eoraptor are punks on the block," said Professor Sereno. "There were other large mammal-like reptiles around that would have been the biggest herbivores and a squat four-legged predator related to alligators that would have swallowed Eodromaeus in one bite."

"Eodromaeus needed some opportunity, some change of events to get the upper hand, so it was extinctions of other animals that were already there which ultimately gave dinosaurs their foot in the door about 200 million years ago."

Dr Paul Barrett, research scientist with the Natural History Museum, said the research was "very interesting" and could bring us closer to the first dinosaur, which he thinks must have lived very shortly before Eodromaeus.

"We have ideas of what dinosaurs looked like from later members of the groups but they're likely to look more similar as they get closer to that ancestral dinosaur," he said.

These two dinosaurs, he said, could represent two of three great dinosaur lineages - the theropods and the sauropods - the other being the ornithischia group to which creatures such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops belonged.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12175263
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)

Does the ivory-bill still exist?

Ivory-bill woodpecker - Unlikely.

Written by By Rodney Barreto, Chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

December 2010. In the spring of 2005, news swept the United States and much of the world that the ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, had been found in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. The news was electrifying to birders and conservation groups.

The Nature Conservancy offered a reward for finding an Ivory-billed woodpecker of $50,000. It has not been paid.

Gene Sparling, an amateur ornithologist from Hot Springs, Ark., had reported seeing one adult male ivory-bill in the Cache River refuge on Feb. 11, 2004. Other ornithologists soon searched for documentation and proof that ivory-bills still existed. They seemed to make their case when David Luneau of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock made a short, blurry videotape of a reported ivory-bill taking flight from a tree.

Some of the groups that reviewed the evidence and supported the claim that the woodpecker, with its 3-foot wingspan and signature whitish-ivory bill, still existed included the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some wanted to believe that the gigantic woodpecker, known by such names as white-back, pearly bill and even Lord God bird, still flew safely somewhere. The name "Lord God bird" came from people seeing the bird and exclaiming, "Lord God, what a bird!"

Had the short video clip been clear, that would have been one thing. However, ornithologists across the country weighed in, and many believed the searchers had spotted the smaller, common pileated woodpecker.

Not long after the reported Arkansas sighting, a team led by an Auburn University professor said it had audio recordings of what members believed were the sounds of one or more ivory-bills in the Choctawhatchee River basin in the Florida Panhandle. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) mobilized a team to deal with questions and issues about the Choctawhatchee finding, which proved untrue.

To understand the discussion as to whether ivory-bills still exist, you have to understand something of the bird itself and the history of our country.

Ivory-bill ID
Adult ivory-bills measured 19 to 21 inches, were bluish-black in color and had white markings on the neck, sides and back, resembling a white saddle. Both male and female birds sported a prominent top crest, which was red in males and black in females.

Early settlers and frontiersmen reported that male Native American Indians, particularly chieftains, wore the bills of ivory-billed woodpeckers on their belts or as part of breast plates. The author of "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," Jerome A. Jackson, points to the archaeological record showing that the heads and bills of both ivory-billed and pileated woodpeckers were much in demand by Indians, sometimes far outside the birds' range. He mentions the recent discovery of an Indian burial in Colorado with ivory-bills on the deceased, more than 1,000 miles from recognized ivory-bill habitat.

Jackson and other authors accurately point to the fact that Indians armed with bows and arrows weren't the death knell of the species. Logging was.

Ivory-bill habitat and distribution
Ivory-bills were found primarily in the Southeast's virgin hardwood forest river bottoms and longleaf pine forests, and were well documented in Florida and a dozen other southeastern states. With their powerful chisel-like bill, they foraged on lots of dying and dead trees. such as sweet gums, ash and longleaf pine, removing the bark in search of insects and larvae. Ornithologists say ivory-bills needed immense areas to feed - perhaps 10 to 12 square miles of old-growth forest per pair.

As one forest after another fell to an expanding country's insatiable demand for wood, ivory-bills began to vanish. Ornithologists say the species was extremely rare after 1900. Nowhere was this more evident than in Florida.

What are the chances?
Whether an ivory-bill was actually spotted in the Cache River NWR is still a matter of debate. I have my own ideas, but if the sighting was accurate, it would have required dozens and dozens of breeding pairs of birds over the past 100 or so years for birds to still exist today.

Following the Cache River announcement, river-bottom searches were initiated in Florida and five other states. No definitive sightings emerged.

We still have the pileated relative of the ivory-bill. Yet we want to believe the most magnificent of North American woodpeckers still exists, somewhere. Although it seems unlikely, time will tell.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/ivory-bill-woodpecker021.html

Does the ivory-bill still exist?

Ivory-bill woodpecker - Unlikely.

Written by By Rodney Barreto, Chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

December 2010. In the spring of 2005, news swept the United States and much of the world that the ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, had been found in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. The news was electrifying to birders and conservation groups.

The Nature Conservancy offered a reward for finding an Ivory-billed woodpecker of $50,000. It has not been paid.

Gene Sparling, an amateur ornithologist from Hot Springs, Ark., had reported seeing one adult male ivory-bill in the Cache River refuge on Feb. 11, 2004. Other ornithologists soon searched for documentation and proof that ivory-bills still existed. They seemed to make their case when David Luneau of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock made a short, blurry videotape of a reported ivory-bill taking flight from a tree.

Some of the groups that reviewed the evidence and supported the claim that the woodpecker, with its 3-foot wingspan and signature whitish-ivory bill, still existed included the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some wanted to believe that the gigantic woodpecker, known by such names as white-back, pearly bill and even Lord God bird, still flew safely somewhere. The name "Lord God bird" came from people seeing the bird and exclaiming, "Lord God, what a bird!"

Had the short video clip been clear, that would have been one thing. However, ornithologists across the country weighed in, and many believed the searchers had spotted the smaller, common pileated woodpecker.

Not long after the reported Arkansas sighting, a team led by an Auburn University professor said it had audio recordings of what members believed were the sounds of one or more ivory-bills in the Choctawhatchee River basin in the Florida Panhandle. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) mobilized a team to deal with questions and issues about the Choctawhatchee finding, which proved untrue.

To understand the discussion as to whether ivory-bills still exist, you have to understand something of the bird itself and the history of our country.

Ivory-bill ID
Adult ivory-bills measured 19 to 21 inches, were bluish-black in color and had white markings on the neck, sides and back, resembling a white saddle. Both male and female birds sported a prominent top crest, which was red in males and black in females.

Early settlers and frontiersmen reported that male Native American Indians, particularly chieftains, wore the bills of ivory-billed woodpeckers on their belts or as part of breast plates. The author of "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," Jerome A. Jackson, points to the archaeological record showing that the heads and bills of both ivory-billed and pileated woodpeckers were much in demand by Indians, sometimes far outside the birds' range. He mentions the recent discovery of an Indian burial in Colorado with ivory-bills on the deceased, more than 1,000 miles from recognized ivory-bill habitat.

Jackson and other authors accurately point to the fact that Indians armed with bows and arrows weren't the death knell of the species. Logging was.

Ivory-bill habitat and distribution
Ivory-bills were found primarily in the Southeast's virgin hardwood forest river bottoms and longleaf pine forests, and were well documented in Florida and a dozen other southeastern states. With their powerful chisel-like bill, they foraged on lots of dying and dead trees. such as sweet gums, ash and longleaf pine, removing the bark in search of insects and larvae. Ornithologists say ivory-bills needed immense areas to feed - perhaps 10 to 12 square miles of old-growth forest per pair.

As one forest after another fell to an expanding country's insatiable demand for wood, ivory-bills began to vanish. Ornithologists say the species was extremely rare after 1900. Nowhere was this more evident than in Florida.

What are the chances?
Whether an ivory-bill was actually spotted in the Cache River NWR is still a matter of debate. I have my own ideas, but if the sighting was accurate, it would have required dozens and dozens of breeding pairs of birds over the past 100 or so years for birds to still exist today.

Following the Cache River announcement, river-bottom searches were initiated in Florida and five other states. No definitive sightings emerged.

We still have the pileated relative of the ivory-bill. Yet we want to believe the most magnificent of North American woodpeckers still exists, somewhere. Although it seems unlikely, time will tell.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/ivory-bill-woodpecker021.html