A new species of Pliocene albatross from New Zealand

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A new genus of albatross has been described from Pliocene age remains from the Tangahoe Formation of New Zealand. The new genus has been given the name Aldiomedes angustirostris ("Al's narrow beak albatross"), with the genus name originating from Alastair "Al" Johnson, the paleontologist who initially found the remains, and Diomedes, the Greek mythological figure after which the albatross family was named, and the species name originating from the Latin words "angustus," meaning "narrow," and "rostrom," meaning "beak," in reference to the extremely narrow beak of this species in comparison to those of other albatross species. This new genus is distinguished from other albatross species by its extremely narrow beak, which is not present in any modern albatross species. It is theorized that this beak morphology resulted from a more piscivorous diet in contrast to the squid-based diet of modern albatrosses. The discovery of this genus also suggests that the extinction of several species of smaller-sized albatrosses resulted from changes in seabird diversity during the Pliocene. Here is an image of the skull used to describe the new genus and a link to the paper describing it.



Paper (open access!): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ibi.12757