Paleontologists have discovered the fossilized bones from a brand new species of the parrot genus Agapornis at three localities of the UNESCO World Heritage web site of the Cradle of Humankind in Gauteng Province, South Africa.
Life reconstruction of a pair of Agapornis longipes feeding on the bottom within the Early Pleistocene of the Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa, in the course of the dry season. Picture credit score: Martina Cadin.
“Lovebirds (genus Agapornis) are small-sized parrots endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar,” mentioned Dr. Marco Pavia from the Università degli Studi di Torino and his colleagues.
“They at the moment embody 9 species residing in woodlands or picket savannahs the place they breed in tree cavities and feed on grass seeds or fruits collected totally on the bottom and, to a lesser diploma, on timber.”
“In keeping with genetic information, parrots colonized Africa within the Late Eocene/Early Oligocene and Agapornis solely colonized Africa from Australasia within the Late Oligocene/Early Miocene, round 24 million years in the past.”
“Psittacula krameri is the newest parrot to have dispersed into the continent, close to the Plio-Pleistocene boundary (2.5-1.5 million years in the past).”
“The fossil report of parrots in Africa may be very scarce and the oldest dates again to the Early Pliocene of Langebaanweg.”
“Remarkably, a lot of the African fossils have been attributed to Agapornis, the oldest of which is represented by Agapornis attenboroughi described from the Early Pliocene of Langebaanweg, South Africa.”
The newly-identified species, Agapornis longipes, lived in South Africa roughly 2.5 million years in the past.
Its fossilized stays have been discovered at Kromdraai, Cooper’s Cave and Swartkrans websites in South Africa.
The specimens embody all main wing bones (humerus, ulna, and carpometacarpus), the tarsometatarsus, a fragmentary mandible and coracoid.
“The fossils have been retrieved from three localities within the UNESCO World Heritage web site of the Cradle of Humankind, a key space for understanding early hominin evolution in southern Africa,” the paleontologists mentioned.
“The Cradle of Humankind incorporates a number of hominin-bearing localities that span from the Late Pliocene to the Late Pleistocene and their research illuminate the paleoecological and paleoenvironmental contexts surrounding the looks of the genus Homo within the area, in addition to its relationship with contemporaneous australopithecines and Paranthropus.”
“The three fossil websites of Swartkrans, Cooper’s Cave and Kromdraai are a number of hundred meters from one another, situated within the southern a part of the Cradle, respectively 1 km east and ca. 1.5 km northeast of the Sterkfontein Caves,” they added.
Agapornis longipes is distinguished from the 9 residing species of the Agapornis genus and from the extinct Agapornis atlanticus and Agapornis attenbouroughi by a number of morphological characters and by the smallest humerus/tarsometatarsus ratio of all Agapornis species.
“All however one Agapornis species are grass seed eaters and secondarily fruit eaters, and are typically associated to the presence of grassland, everlasting water assets and tall timber that present both pure cavities or holes excavated by different birds akin to woodpeckers or barbets,” the researchers mentioned.
“The elongated ft of Agapornis longipes may relate to the feeding adaptation of this extinct species.”
“The truth is, the trendy species with the decrease humerus/tarsometatarsus ratios usually accumulate meals on the bottom, whereas the others additionally accumulate seeds or fruits from the timber.”
“We thus hypothesize that Agapornis longipes took benefit of its longer legs to feed on grass seeds on the bottom within the tall and dense grassland of the paleo-Bloubank valley as instructed by the paleoenvironmental reconstructions.”
“The current-day surroundings of the Cradle of Humankind and of this a part of South Africa will not be markedly completely different from that of the Early Pleistocene, and the extinction of the lovebirds from this area in the course of the Pleistocene was likely associated to a change in microclimatic circumstances or to the extinction of particular meals assets quite than to the change of common environmental circumstances.”
The brand new species is described in a paper within the journal Geobios.
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Marco Pavia et al. A brand new species of Lovebird (Aves, Psittaculidae, Agapornis) from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Cradle of Humankind (Gauteng, South Africa). Geobios, printed on-line August 9, 2024; doi: 10.1016/j.geobios.2024.05.006
