title: Eocene fossil is earliest evidence of flower-visiting by birds.
abstract: Birds are important pollinators, but the evolutionary history of ornithophily (bird pollination) is poorly known. Here, we report a skeleton of the avian taxon Pumiliornis from the middle Eocene of Messel in Germany with preserved stomach contents containing numerous pollen grains of an eudicotyledonous angiosperm. The skeletal morphology of Pumiliornis is in agreement with this bird having been a, presumably nectarivorous, flower-visitor. It represents the earliest and first direct fossil evidence of flower-visiting by birds and indicates a minimum age of 47 million years for the origin of bird-flower interactions. As Pumiliornis does not belong to any of the modern groups of flower-visiting birds, the origin of ornithophily in some angiosperm lineages may have predated that of their extant avian pollinators.
authors.affiliation: Ornithological Section, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Senckenberganlage 25, Frankfurt am Main 60325, Germany gerald.mayr@senckenberg.de.
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mayr
authors.affiliation: Palaeobotanical Section, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Senckenberganlage 25, Frankfurt am Main 60325, Germany.
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Wilde
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds; D005580:Fossils; D005766:Gastrointestinal Contents; D011058:Pollen; D054817:Pollination
keywords: Eocene; Messel; bird pollination; fossil birds; ornithophily