Psittacopedids and zygodactylids: The diverse and species-rich psittacopasserine birds from the early Eocene London Clay of Walton-on-the-Naze (Essex, UK)

ABSTRACT

The Daniels collection of fossil birds from the early Eocene London Clay of Walton-on-the-Naze (Essex, UK) contains multiple specimens of the Psittacopedidae and Zygodactylidae, which are here for the first time studied in detail. The Psittacopedidae include Parapsittacopes bergdahli, Psittacomimus eos, gen. et sp. nov., ?Psittacopes occidentalis, sp. nov., and at least one further unnamed species. The Zygodactylidae comprise Primozygodactylus cf. danielsi, Primoscens cf. minutus, Primoscens carolinae, sp. nov., as well as several unnamed species, which are represented by fragmentary remains. A very small zygodactylid-like species, which was previously identified as P. minutus, is described as Minutornis primoscenoides, gen. et sp. nov. A phylogenetic analysis showed the Zygodactylidae and Psittacopedidae to be stem group representatives of the Passeriformes (passerines), but the exact interrelationships of the fossil taxa are poorly resolved. In particular, no compelling character evidence supports a monophyletic Zygodactylidae, with distinctive features of these birds being likely to be plesiomorphic for Psittacopasseres or also found in crown group Passeriformes. In the majority rule consensus tree of our analysis, Minutornis is the sister taxon of a clade including the Zygodactylidae and Passeriformes, whereas the affinities of the Psittacopedidae were insufficiently resolvedhttp://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:81800349-5DE9-468B-81D7-6A5664526DF1.

KEYWORDS:

• Aves
• evolution
• fossil birds
• Psittacopasseres
• systematics

Acknowledgments

We thank Sven Tränkner for taking some of the photographs (additional images were taken by GM). Comments from two anonymous reviewers improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2022.2141629.