Tag Archives: Ciconiidae

Ciconia maltha Miller

La Brea Stork (Ciconia maltha)

The La Brea Stork was described in 1910, originally based on fossil bones that were recovered from the rich La Brea Tar Pits in California, USA; however, the species was for more widespread and is now known to also have occurred in other parts of what today is the USA.

The species already appears in Late Pliocene deposits and disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene, but the population that inhabited the island of Cuba apparently survived well into the Holocene era and may even have been eradicated by the first human settlers.

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edited: 19.8.2022

Ciconia sp. ‘Cuba’

Cuban Stork (Ciconia sp.)

This form is known from fossil bones only that were found in the Las Breas de San Felipe tar pits in the Matanzas Province of Cuba in the Caribbean.

The Cuban Stork lived in sympatry with another now extinct congeneric species, the La Brea Stork (Ciconia maltha Miller), which, however, was not restricted to the island of Cuba but also inhabited large parts of what today is the USA.

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edited: 19.8.2022