The status of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States has been uncertain since 1942 when the last photographs were taken of this species. Recent sightings in Arkansas, however, confirm that Campephilus principalis is still living. The ecology of C. principalis has been well documented; yet, little is known about the osteology of this incredibly rare bird. The lack of skeletal specimens in museum collections makes this aspect of its biology even more difficult to study. DigiMorph obtained and scanned both a mounted specimen (CU 51246) and a preserved specimen (shown here) of the ivory-billed woodpecker in order to produce imagery of the internal and external morphology of the organism, such as the falsely colored image above. Although both specimens are in less than excellent condition, this is one of the few ways to view the morphology of one of the rarest birds in North America.

More information about the ivory-billed woodpecker is available on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

This preserved specimen was made available to The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Timothy Rowe of The University of Texas at Austin. Funding for scanning and image processing was provided by a National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Rowe.

Dorsal view of specimen

The specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 28 September 2005 along the sagittal axis for a total of 515 slices. Each slice is 0.25 mm thick with an interslice spacing of 0.20 mm (resulting in a slice overlap of 0.05 mm), and a field of reconstruction of 267 mm.

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Bock, W. J. 1999b. Functional and evolutionary morphology of woodpeckers. Ostrich 70:23-31.

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Fitzpatrick, J. W., M. Lammertink. M. D. Luneau, Jr., T. W. Gallagher, B. R. Harrison, G. M. Sparling, K. V. Rosenberg, R. W. Rohrbaugh, E. C. H. Swarthout, P. H. Wrege, S. B. Swarthout, M. S. Dantzker, R. A. Charif, T. R. Barksdale, J. V. Remsen, Jr., S. D. Simon, and D. Zollner. 2005. Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in continental North America. Science 308:1460-1462.

Parker, W. K. 1875. On the morphology of the skull in the woodpeckers (Picidae) and wrynecks (Yungidae). Transactions of the Linnean Society, London 1:1-22.

Shufeldt, R. W. 1900. On the osteology of the woodpeckers. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 39:578-622.

More information about the ivory-billed woodpecker is available on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.