South American and Antarctic Continental Cenozoic Birds: Paleobiogeographic affinities and disparities

TAMBUSSI, C.; DEGRANGE, F.

Springer Verlag

Lugar: Dordretch; Año: 2013 p. 1134

978-94-007-5466-9

??Fossils are, after all, a window to the past and a desperate truth that we will never have an 66 entire clear picture of the ancient times???Claudia Tambussi 67 This book is the compilation of nearly 30 years of fascination for fossil birds and 68 their evolution. That fascination has maintained my enthusiasm for research on all 69 aspects of birds to the present day. Fortunately, 10 years ago my colleague 70 Federico ??Dino?? Degrange added his own enthusiasm. 71 The purpose of this book is to provide a synthesis of the fossil bird record of 72 South America and Antarctica through Cenozoic, considering the geologic forces 73 and climatic?environmental forces that may have shaped its evolution. 74 The central point is on terrestrial or arboreal birds, but some considerations on 75 aquatic (continental or marine) birds are also made. The temporal focus is on the 76 Paleocene through Pliocene times. 77 The book begins with a preview (Chaps. 1?4), in which the scope, conceptual, 78 geological, and paleogeographic framework are laid out. The rest is arranged into 79 five main sections. Three chapters compile the information about the main fossil 80 localities chronologically organized. The penultimate section deals with the 81 zoophagous guild, analyzing the record of 13 associations and evaluating the 82 possible dominance of zoophagous over other guilds. The final chapter deals with 83 Bio-Connections of South America and Antarctica with Other Continents and 84 therefore addresses some issues on bird biogeography. 85 The information came from our own examination of fossils as well as a liter- 86 ature review. The data, however, are not homogeneous, since some temporal gaps 87 without, or with only very scant, information occurs. Some topics inevitably arise 88 in more than one section, but we have tried to keep the repetition to a minimum, 89 and to cross-reference wherever possible. 90 A second goal of this work is to provide a textbook and source of inspiration for 91 students and novel researchers. We expect that our results have the desired effect. 92 This book is intended to provide a reasonable basis for further research. 93 During 2011, Dr. Silvio Casadío (CONICET and Universidad Nacional de Río 94 Negro) and Dr. Miguel Griffin (CONICET and Universidad Nacional de La Plata) Layout: T1 Standard SC Book ID: 299617_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-007-5466-9 Chapter No.: FM Date: 24-10-2012 Page: 5/12 v Editor Proof UNCORRECTED PROOF 95 organized the symposium Seaways and landbridges: Southern Hemisphere bio- 96 geographic connections through time in Argentina, which proved to be an inter- 97 esting space for exchange and discussion on the same topics approached from very 98 different perspectives. This symposium gave us the push to start this work.