Laricola elegans
Miocene
Saint Gerand le Puy Allier, France.

Complete 250mm skeleton.

Charadriiformes.

Laricola is an extinct genus of gull-like shorebird known from the Oligocene and Miocene of France.

Anyone who has dug at vertebrate sites where birds occur knows fossil bird bones are rarely found complete.  When you find a bird bone, you’re lucky if you have one identifiable bone end.

Here’s a skeleton for the collector who might already have a Green River bird specimen and a fossil cormorant from Florida and has been waiting for something unusual.