Cuban Macaw (Ara tircolor) in the Upper Pleistocene of western Cuba

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Abstract

The Cuban Macaw, Ara tricolor (Bechstein, 1811), is an extinct species of large parrots with little known historical distribution and ecology. To date, only three late Quaternary paleontological and one archaeozoological (17th–18th centuries) finds of the species have been described from central Cuba. This article describes the new (fourth) fossil record of the Cuban Macaw, a fragmentary carpometacarpus from the Upper Pleistocene layers of El Abrón Cave in Pinar del Río province. This is the first documented evidence of the species from the western part of Cuba. The associated fauna indicates that the Cuban Macaw lived in mosaic, semi-open marshy landscapes, probably similar to those in the vicinity of Ciénaga de Zapata in modern times.

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About the authors

N. V. Zelenkov

Borissiak Paleontological institute, Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: nzelen@paleo.ru
Russian Federation, Moscow

References

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2. Fig. 1. Map of the location of the El Abron Cave in Cuba. Designations: 1 – Ciénaga de Zapata.

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3. Fig. 2. Carpometacarpus of the Cuban macaw Ara tricolor (Bechstein, 1811) in comparison with selected modern Psittacidae and Columbidae: (a), (d), (h) – Ara tricolor, specimen PIN, No. 5781/39; locality: El Abron Cave, Cuba, Pinar del Rio Province, Upper Pleistocene; (b) – Ara militaris (Linnaeus, 1766), specimen 2006.0311 of the collection of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences, modern; (c), (e) – Amazona leucocephala (Linnaeus, 1756), specimen of the osteological collection of the PIN RAS, No. 97-231-1, modern; (g), (g) – Columba livia (Gmelin, 1789), specimen from the osteological collection of the PIN RAS, No. 91-1-1, modern; (a)–(g) – dorsal view; (d)–(g) – caudal view; (h) – ventral view. Key: dtc, dorsal edge of the metacarpal trochlea; fcc, fovea carpalis caudalis; mim, minor metacarpal; tc, metacarpal trochlea; vtc, ventral edge of the metacarpal trochlea; the arrow indicates the proximal part of the minor metacarpal (dorsally convex in Psittacidae; see text).

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