Phoeniconotius is an extinct genus of flamingo that lived in Australia from the late Oligocene to the early Miocene. Unlike modern flamingos and the contemporary Phoenicopterus novaehollandiae, it was likely less well adapted for swimming and deep water wading. Phoeniconotius was a robust flamingo with bones more massive than those of the modern greater flamingo. Only a single species is recognized, Phoeniconotius eyrensis.
Phoeniconotius is an extinct genus of flamingo that lived in Australia from the late Oligocene to the early Miocene. Unlike modern flamingos and the contemporary Phoenicopterus novaehollandiae, it was likely less well adapted for swimming and deep water wading. Phoeniconotius was a robust flamingo with bones more massive than those of the modern greater flamingo. Only a single species is recognized, Phoeniconotius eyrensis.
==History== The fossils of Phoeniconotius have been discovered in the Lake Eyre basin of Australia, specifically a layer of mudstone belonging to the Etadunna Formation on the western shore of Lake Palankarinna. The type material consists of three bones, the distal end of the left tarsometatarsus and two phalanges. The material was collected from the surface and were discovered in association with one another, however not articulated. One phalanx, which is thought to represent the third toe, matches well with the corresponding area on the tarsometatarsus while the second known toe bone, likely representing the fourth toe, is thought to stem from the animal's right side. All the material is equally mineralized and shows the same coloration.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).