| Pelagornithidae | |
|---|---|
| |
| Replica of a Pelagornis miocaenus skeleton at the NMNH | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Infraclass: | Neognathae |
| Order: | †Odontopterygiformes Howard, 1957 |
| Family: | †Pelagornithidae Fürbringer, 1888 |
| Genera | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Family synonymy but see text
| |
The Pelagornithidae, commonly called pelagornithids, pseudodontorns, bony-toothed birds, false-toothed birds or pseudotooth birds, are a prehistoric family of large seabirds. Their fossil remains have been found all over the world in rocks dating between the Early Paleocene and the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary.[1][2]
Most of the common names refer to these birds' most notable trait: tooth-like points on their beak's edges, which, unlike true teeth, contained Volkmann's canals and were outgrowths of the premaxillary and mandibular bones. Even "small" species of pseudotooth birds were the size of albatrosses; the largest ones had wingspans estimated at 5–6 metres (15–20 ft) and were among the largest flying birds ever to live. They were the dominant seabirds of most oceans throughout most of the Cenozoic, and modern humans apparently missed encountering them only by a tiny measure of evolutionary time: the last known pelagornithids were contemporaries of Homo habilis and the beginning of the history of technology.[3]
- ^ Bourdon (2005), Mayr, G. (2008), Boessenecker and Smith (2011)
- ^ Gerald Mayr, G. et al. (2019) Oldest, smallest and phylogenetically most basal pelagornithid, from the early Paleocene of New Zealand, sheds light on the evolutionary history of the largest flying birds.
- ^ Hopson (1964), Olson (1985: pp. 199–201), Bourdon (2005), Geraads (2006), Mayr (2009: pp. 55,59), Mlíkovský (2009)