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Abstract <p>Loons (genus <i>Gavia</i>; family Gaviidae, order Gaviiformes) are highly specialized diving birds with an incompletely understood evolutionary history. In the Early to Middle Miocene, the earliest small species of the genus <i>Gavia</i> were part of the warm-climate faunas of southern Europe; however, as the climate cooled in the Late Miocene, loons almost completely disappeared from the fossil record of Eurasia, which may be explained by the shift of their nesting range to high latitudes. The coracoid of a fossil loon from the Upper Miocene of the Hyargas Nuur 2 locality in western Mongolia, described in this paper, is the oldest find of the family Gaviidae in the fossil record of Asia and the first find in the continental Neogene of the region. With respect to the size, the loon from Hyargas Nuur 2 corresponds to the modern <i>G. stellata</i>, but is morphologically closer to <i>G. arctica</i> and may represent an ancestral form of this modern species. This find is within the modern breeding range of <i>G. arctica</i> and also interpreted as belonging to the breeding range of loons in the Late Miocene.</p>

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A Loon (Aves, Gaviiformes) from the Upper Miocene of Mongolia

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月1日

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  • N. V. Zelenkov

摘要

Abstract

Loons (genus Gavia; family Gaviidae, order Gaviiformes) are highly specialized diving birds with an incompletely understood evolutionary history. In the Early to Middle Miocene, the earliest small species of the genus Gavia were part of the warm-climate faunas of southern Europe; however, as the climate cooled in the Late Miocene, loons almost completely disappeared from the fossil record of Eurasia, which may be explained by the shift of their nesting range to high latitudes. The coracoid of a fossil loon from the Upper Miocene of the Hyargas Nuur 2 locality in western Mongolia, described in this paper, is the oldest find of the family Gaviidae in the fossil record of Asia and the first find in the continental Neogene of the region. With respect to the size, the loon from Hyargas Nuur 2 corresponds to the modern G. stellata, but is morphologically closer to G. arctica and may represent an ancestral form of this modern species. This find is within the modern breeding range of G. arctica and also interpreted as belonging to the breeding range of loons in the Late Miocene.