Woodpecker Fossil From 200,000 Years Ago Found in 'Staggering' Condition

The bones of an ancient woodpecker have been unearthed in Argentina, shocking scientists around the world and marking the most complete fossil of its kind in South America.

The woodpecker fossil, thought to be over 200,000 years old, was found in a stone quarry in San Pedro, around 100 miles north of Buenos Aires, surprising paleontologists with its high degree of preservation.

This finding is hoped to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary record of the woodpecker, as prior fossil evidence is quite scarce. Many species of woodpecker are considered threatened or endangered today.

"We're very pleased about this find, as it brings a unique specimen to the study of this group of birds. His skull and limbs will reveal to us data that will fill in the existing gaps in the fossil record of these birds," José Luis Aguilar, director of the museum, said in a translated Facebook post by the Museo Paleontológico de San Pedro, announcing the find.

The woodpecker fossil was spotted during an excavation by José Luis Aguilar and Silvina Carro from the museum, who cut out the stone containing the bones to bring back to the museum. In the same quarry where the fossil was found, some of the stone strata date back up to a million years, the museum explains in the post.

After cutting the bones from the sediment and cleaning the specimen, the fossil was found to be in good condition, with the skeleton being nearly complete on the left side of the woodpecker's body.

"The state of preservation of the specimen is staggering. Its delicate parts have been preserved in a thin slime that later turned into rock. We believe its antiquity is more than 200,000 years," Aguilar said in the post.

"The specimen's fossil bones were articulated in a life position, distributed over a small space of only 16 centimeters [6.3 inches] long by 4 centimeters [1.6 inches] wide; the skull and jaws turned back, its left arm contracted and its hind leg elongated. In the bucket you appreciate cannulas or remigial papillas where the flag feathers were inserted."

The bird is thought to belong to the Picidae family, of which modern-day woodpeckers are also a member. Today, woodpeckers are found in forests across the world, including in tropical rainforests, woodlands, savannahs, scrublands, and bamboo forests.

"The family Picidae includes globally 28 genera and about 216 species vulgarly known as woodpeckers, with a cosmopolitan distribution in the holarctic regions (North America and Eurasia), neotropical (South America and part of Central America), Afrotropical (Africa and the Middle East) and eastern (Indomalaysia), with the exception of Australia, Madagascar and Poles," Jorge Noriega, one of Argentina's most recognized fossil bird researchers, said in the post.

Around 20 of these species are threatened with extinction, with the U.S.'s ivory-billed woodpecker being classed as critically endangered, and the imperial woodpecker considered extinct in the wild.

"The world fossil record of woodpeckers is very scarce and includes fragment material represented mainly by few skeletal elements. The South American paleontological register is even poorer and most mentions are restricted to living forms from the Quaternary [period] of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The exception is an extinct species described by Agnolin and Jofré for the Late Pleistocene of the northeast of Buenos Aires province, Colaptes naroskyi," Noriega said.

"The preliminary analysis of the specimen of San Pedro allows, for the time being, to identify it as a member of the genus Colaptes, but it will be necessary to deepen comparisons of its morphology and its measures with other and current fossil representatives in order to reach a precise determination at the species level. The dimensions of their bones are slightly larger than those of the Colaptes species currently inhabiting the region, although their proportions are very similar."

There are 14 species of Colaptes woodpeckers alive today, which are usually found across South and Central America. Two species, the northern flicker and the gilded flicker, are found in parts of the U.S.

The specimen will be on display in the Museo Paleontológico de San Pedro in the coming weeks.

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