Coturnix, Garsault, 1764

COTURNIX Garsault, 1764 View in CoL

The fossils are referred to Coturnix rather than to other genera of Galliformes , because of their size (this genus includes the sole small-sized Galliformes from the western Palaearctic and north-western tropical regions) and the characters listed by Holman (1964), Olson (1976), Fitzgerald (1969) and Dyke et al. (2003), such as the characteristically short and slightly curved premaxilla, with great apertura nasi ossea, the welldeveloped secondary fossa pneumotricipitalis on the proximal end of humerus, the characteristically flat and curved ulnae, the reduced processus pisiformis at the carpometacarpus, the femur relatively long and slightly curved, and the size of the crista cnemialis cranialis with respect to the crista cnemialis lateralis. All the bones here studied agree with the morphology of bones of Coturnix , detailed by Fitzgerald (1969), although they differ from C. coturnix in size and proportions.

The new fossil bones of quail from the Macaronesian islands were compared with common quail ( C. coturnix ) bones from extant specimens and with unarticulated fossils from Es Pouàs ( Late Quaternary, Eivissa , Balearic Isands) (Supporting Information, Table S1), and with bones of the Canary Island extinct quail ( C. gomerae ) (specimens of type series from Bujero del Silo, La Gomera). The Afrotropical harlequin quail, Coturnix delegorguei Delegorgue, 1847 , has bones of similar size to those of C. coturnix (measurements of the sole available skeleton are given by Jaume et al., 1993).

EXTINCT MACARONESIAN QUAILS

Coturnix lignorum Rando, Alcover, Pieper, Olson ,