Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

30-million year old hummingbird fossil found--in FRANCE!!


This from today's Independent:

Found in France, a 30 million-year-old hummingbird fossil
By Emily Murphy in Paris
Published: 19 December 2007

The "rediscovery" of a stunningly-preserved 30 million-year-old hummingbird fossil in southern France has deepened the mystery of why these fragile creatures disappeared from Europe and now exist only on the American continent.

The fossil was originally found by an amateur palaeontologist at the end of the 1980s in the Lubéron national park in Provence. It then lay in his private collection for a number of years, unknown to the wider world and as good as undiscovered.

It was finally "re-discovered" after its purchase by another amateur palaeontologist, Nicolas Tourment, a long-time colleague of Antoine Louchart who is an expert on bird fossils.
Read the whole fascinating article here.