''Xenopsitta'' is a prehistoric

parrot Parrots (Psittaciformes), also known as psittacines (), are birds with a strong curved beak, upright stance, and clawed feet. They are classified in four families that contain roughly 410 species in 101 genus (biology), genera, found mostly in ...

genus known from a

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bird bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) a ...

early Miocene The Early Miocene (also known as Lower Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages: the Aquitanian age, Aquitanian and Burdigalian stages. The sub-epoch lasted from 23.03 ± 0.05 annum, Ma to ...

deposits at Merkur, in western

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

of the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, and described by Jiri Mlikovsky in 1998. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

is ''Xenopsitta fejfari''. The generic name derives from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

for "foreign" or "strange", referring to the apparent scarcity of parrots in the Miocene of Europe, and a diminutive form of the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

for "parrot". The specific

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

honours Czech palaeontologist Oldrich Fejfar. It was described as a small parrot with a short and robust tarsometatarsus resembling the tarsometatarsi of large African parrots in the genera ''

Psittacus ''Psittacus'' is a genus of African grey parrots in the subfamily Psittacinae. It contains two species: the grey parrot (''Psittacus erithacus'') and the Timneh parrot (''Psittacus timneh''). For many years, the grey parrot and Timneh parrot we ...

'', ''

Poicephalus The genus ''Poicephalus'' belongs to the subfamily Psittacinae of the true parrots (Psittacidae) and comprises ten species of parrots native to various regions of the Afrotropical realm, which encompasses Sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from Seneg ...

'' and '' Coracopsis''.

References

Psittacini Bird genera Parrots Prehistoric birds of Europe Fossil taxa described in 1998 Miocene birds {{paleo-bird-stub