Buteo sanfelipensis Suárez, 2020

Suárez, William, 2022, Catalogue of Cuban fossil and subfossil birds, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 142 (1), pp. 247-248 : 40-41

21. † Buteo sanfelipensis Suárez, 2020

San Felipe’s Hawk (Gavilán de San Felipe)

Buteo sanfelipensis Suárez, 2020 a, Zootaxa 4780: 28.

Holotype.— Left tarsometatarsus without trochlea IV, MNHNCu 75.4910 (Suárez 2020a: 28, fig. 10 F [anterior], G [medial], H [posterior]). Collected in San Felipe I on 14 May 2009 by WS and Stephen Díaz Franco.

Type locality.— Las Breas de San Felipe ( MLB), c. 5.5 km west of the town of Martí , San Felipe Valley, municipality of Martí, Matanzas province, Cuba (Suárez 2020a: 28; for description of this deposit see Iturralde-Vinent et al. 2000). Fig. 5 .

Distribution.—Asphalt deposits in west Cuba (see Appendix). Matanzas. Martí: MLB (Suárez 2020a: 28).

Direct 14 C dating .—None. For dating of other bird species at the type locality, see Antigone cubensis , Gymnogyps varonai and Ornimegalonyx oteroi , and of associated extinct mammals ( Parocnus browni = 11,880 ± 420 to 4,960 ± 280 years 14 C BP), see Jull et al. (2004) and Steadman et al. (2005).

Notes.—Unknown from other Quaternary deposits in Cuba, being the rarest extinct species of Accipitridae in the country’s fossil record. Known only by the tarsometatarsus, which resembles the equivalent element in Swainson’s Hawk B. swainsoni Bonaparte, 1838 , and Rough-legged Buzzard B. lagopus ( Pontoppidan, 1763) in size and general morphology, but shorter, among other characters (Suárez 2020a: 28). Much larger and distant in morphology to living species in Cuba (see Kirkconnell et al. 2020) of the genera Chondrohierax Lesson , Elanoides Vieillot , Circus Lacépède , Ictinia Vieillot , or Rostrhamus Lesson (S. L. Olson & WS unpubl.), which are currently unknown in the archipelago’s fossil record.