中国古新世鸟化石的新发现

The Discovery of the Paleocene Bird from China

Several bones of fossil bird were discovered from Fan-Gou Formation at Shimen Basin, Luonan County, Shaanxi Province. It is a kind of smaller-sized bird with many primitive characteris-tics and represents a new genus and species in the order of Charadriiformes. In association with the fossil bird, there is the Bemalambda-Hukoutherium mammalian assemblage, which can be compared very well with those from Sang-Hu Formation, Shi-Zi-Kou Formation etc. in the southeast of China. So, the geological age of the fossil bird from Shimen is Early-Middle Paleocene as same as that of those mammals. It is the first time of discovery of Early-Middle Paleocene bird in China and also in Asia.