First description of an ostrich from the late Miocene of Kerassia (Euboea, Greece): remarks on its cervical anatomy

ABSTRACT

The present study describes an almost complete cervical region of the fossil ostrich Struthio karatheodoris from the Turolian locality of Kerassia (Euboea, Greece). The material comes from two distinct fossiliferous horizons and consists of twelve cervical vertebrae, ten of which belong to the same individual. These specimens are the first remains of a large flightless bird from Kerassia and represent some of the very few findings of the genus Struthio in the sub-Paratethyan (Balkan-Iranian) bioprovince from the late Miocene. The morphology of the cervical vertebrae implies that the neck of S. karatheodoris had similar biomechanical properties to that of extant ostriches, pointing to similar ecological adaptations, relating to food procurement. However, it probably had a more flexible and stronger neck, which might indicate a somewhat different ecology. Furthermore, considerable intraspecific size and morphological variation of the cervical vertebrae of S. karatheodoris is observed. This signifies that S. karatheodoris was not necessarily larger than S. camelus as previously suspected, but their size ranges in fact overlap significantly.

KEYWORDS:

• Aves
• Struthio
• cervical vertebrae
• late Miocene
• Greece

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank G. Veron (MNHN), F. Woog, C. Zeitler (SMNS), E. Weber (ZS) and E. Valakos (ZMUA) for access to comparative collections of extant material. We would also like to thank N. Spassov, Z. Boev and L. Gorobets for providing important literature. Special thanks to W. Lechner and T. Lechner (NaWiLab) for providing comparative material and photographs of extant ostriches. Finally, we thank G. Mayr and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The excavations in Kerassia from 1992 to 2015, under the supervision of G. Theodorou, were funded by local authorities, the General Secretariat for Research and Technologies of Greece and the NKUA Research Account projects 70/4/1394, 70/3/2842, 70/3/3922, 70/3/8567 and 70/3/12301