Cyphornis

Cyphornis Temporal range: Early Miocene (see text)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	†Odontopterygiformes
Family:	†Pelagornithidae
Genus:	†Cyphornis Cope, 1894
Species:	†C. magnus
Binomial name
Cyphornis magnus Cope, 1894
Synonyms
See text

See text

Cyphornis is a genus of the prehistoric pseudotooth birds. These were probably rather close relatives of either pelicans and storks, or of waterfowl, and are here placed in the order Odontopterygiformes to account for this uncertainty.

Only a single species, Cyphornis magnus, is known to date. It is only known with certainty from a single specimen, the rather abraded proximal part of a left tarsometatarsus which was found at Carmanah Point on Vancouver Island (Canada), where the Juan de Fuca Strait opens into the Pacific. The deposits from which it originated were initially dated to the Eocene; subsequent authors have usually assigned them to the Early Miocene though certainly rocks from around the Eo-Oligocene boundary also occur in the region where it was found. At the time of its discovery, it "probably represent[ed] the largest known bird of flight." Even today it is one of the largest (though not heaviest) flying birds known.

Some huge pseudotooth wing bone fossils have been found in Oregon. Specimen LACM 128462, a mostly complete proximal end of a left ulna, originates from the Keasey Formation of Washington County. LACM 127875 are fragments of the proximal humerus ends, the proximal right ulna and the right radius of a single individual presumed to be of the same species; they were found in the Pittsburg Bluff Formation near Mist. These remains all date from the Eo-Oligocene boundary, and considering their size they may well be of C. magnus if it is in fact that old, or of its ancestor or older relative.

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