| rdfs:comment | - Initially mistaken for a walking New World vulture, Neocathartes is now classified as a bathornithid, a family of cariamaeans. Neocathartes was a slender bird, around the size of a turkey vulture. Although it was capable of flight, it probably stayed on the ground most of the time, as evidenced by its long legs. Its lifestyle was most likely comparable to that of the modern-day secretary bird, or the seriema (to which the bathornithids were distantly related).[3]
|
| abstract | - Initially mistaken for a walking New World vulture, Neocathartes is now classified as a bathornithid, a family of cariamaeans. Neocathartes was a slender bird, around the size of a turkey vulture. Although it was capable of flight, it probably stayed on the ground most of the time, as evidenced by its long legs. Its lifestyle was most likely comparable to that of the modern-day secretary bird, or the seriema (to which the bathornithids were distantly related).[3] The misattribution of Neocathartes was resolved by Storrs Olson.[4] Usually a serious, no-nonsense scientist, he could not help noting, The reconstruction published with the original description of Neocathartes has often been reprinted and has now made the "terrestrial vulture" an integral part of the lore of avian paleontology. Well, forget it. Neocathartes is just our old friend Bathornis in another guise. He considered the genus Neocathartes a junior synonym of Bathornis, but this was usually rejected by subsequent studies.
|
