Ciconia maltha L. Miller, 1910

Suárez, William, 2022, Catalogue of Cuban fossil and subfossil birds, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 142 (1), pp. 247-248 : 23-24

6. † Ciconia maltha L. Miller, 1910

La Brea Stork (Cigüeña de La Brea)

Ciconia maltha L. Miller, 1910 , Univ. California Publ. Bull. Dept. Geol. 5: 440.

Jabiru mycteria : Wetmore 1928: 2.

Ciconia maltha : Howard 1942: 202.

Ciconia malttla : Newton 2003: 266 (lapsus calami).

Ciconia lydekkeri : Agnolin 2009: 57.

Holotype.—Left tarsometatarsus, UCMP 11202 ( Miller 1910: 440, Figs. 1 * [proximal], 2* [distal]). Collected by members of the ‘University of California’ ( Miller 1910: 439).

Type locality.—Rancho La Brea, Los Angeles, California, USA (see Miller 1910, Howard 1942, Wetmore 1956: 22, Brodkorb 1963: 289).

Referred material.— Tibiotarsus: distal left, AMNH unnumbered. Tarsometatarsus: proximal right, AMNH unnumbered (see Howard 1942).

Distribution.—Spring deposit (not ‘from a cave’ as indicated by Howard 1942: 189) in central Cuba (see Appendix). Cienfuegos. Palmira: CCM ( Wetmore 1928: 2 [‘ Jabiru mycteria ’], Howard 1942: 201). For summary of continental distribution, see Wetmore (1956: 22, 1959: 8–9), Brodkorb (1963: 289–290), Emslie (1998: 26–27) and Kilmer & Steadman (2016: table 4).

Direct 14 C dating .— None in Cuba. Two indirect conventional dates from its fossil locality in Cienfuegos. Late Pleistocene ( CCM):>30,000 to 25,000 ± 2000 14 C yr BP ( Kulp et al. 1952: 419, table 2 [two samples: pine cones and wood]) .

Notes.—The two referred specimens ( Howard 1942: 201–202) are the only known material of this taxon in Cuba. Formerly recorded as Jabiru mycteria (M. H. C. Lichtenstein, 1819) by Wetmore (1928: 2–3), reidentified as Ciconia maltha by Howard (1942: 202; see also Wetmore 1956: 22, 1959: 9). Navarro (2021: 58, table 4) confused C. maltha with another fossil congeneric taxon in Cuba, the smaller and undescribed Ciconia sp. (see below), which is restricted to tar seeps in Matanzas province ( Suárez & Olson 2003a, Suárez 2020a).