Abstract:

The author summarizes the knowledge of fossil and subfossil bird life from the Carpathian Basin, of all geological ages, site by site. After a historical overview, he presents the Mesozoic, Tertiary and Quaternary bird fauna, based on a holistic reference material consisting of 196 titles indicated in the bibliography, including papers in English (64), Hungarian (50), German (46), Romanian (26), Croatian (9) and Polish (1) languages. The text is supplemented with maps of fossiliferous sites from different ages and a list from 341 paleontological and archaeological sites on species of the Carpathian Basin, respectively. The number of taxa reaches 845, including 189 extinct taxa (two orders, four families, nine genera – five ichnotaxa of which (154 species, five ichnotaxa and 10 subspecies) were described from the Carpathian Basin, primarily. Most significant records include the Mesozoic taxa (Eurolimnornis, Palaeocursornis, Elopteryx), the new Neogene songbirds species and the presence of predecessors of recent European grouses, Bustards and Corvidae species from the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene in the Carpathian Basin.