File:Bird-lore (1917) (14569272717).jpg

Identifier: birdlore19nati (find matches)
Title: Bird-lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals
Subjects: Birds -- Periodicals Birds -- Conservation Periodicals
Publisher: New York, National Association of Audubon Societies
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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etermine the exactrelationship to modern birds. It was a matter of unusual interest then when anearly complete and well-preserved skeleton of the gigantic Diatryma was dis-covered la,st summer. The presence of a great bird in North America in Eocene times was known asfar back as 1876 when Professor Cope of Philadelphia published an account ofsome fragments of a foot which he had found in northern New Mexico twoyears before and to which he gave the name Diatryma gigantea. Nearly twentyyears later Professor Marsh of Yale described a single toe-bone of a giganticbird from the Eocene parts of southern New Jersey. He named this Barornisbut the bone cannot be distinguished from the corresponding bone of Copesgenus. Nothing more was known of this bird until 1911 when the writer foundin the Bighorn Basin, Wyo., in rocks of the same age as those in New Mexico, *See article in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXXVII, .Art. XIby W. D. Matthew and Walter Granger. (193)
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The Giant Bird Diatryma 195 a few more pieces of the foot-bones of Diatryma of an apparently larger speciesthan the southern one. This Dr. Shufeldt has called Diatryma ajax. Lastsummer, however, Mr. William Stein, one of the American Museums trainedfossil collectors, while searching a small and hitherto unexplored section of thefossil beds or badlands of the Bighorn Basin in northwestern Wyoming cameupon this magnificent new specimen which represents a third species and whichhas been named in honor of its discoverer, Diatryma steini. The bones were found somewhat disorganized and were inbedded in a layerof soft bluish shale. Parts of both legs had been weathered out for some yearsand were lying on the surface, and it was the sight of these which led to thediscovery. Because of the remarkable completenessof this new specimen we are able to recon-struct the skeleton of Diatryma with a fairdegree of accuracy—even to make a liferestoration of the bird. All important partsof the skeleton

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