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The clay pits of Tegelen, located near Venlo, Limburg Province, the Netherlands, are known for their terrestrial mammalian fauna of Tiglian age. In 1953, poorly documented but presumably Tiglian-aged bird remains in the Teylers Museum Tegelen collection were identified and described as a white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) by ornithologist G.C.A. Junge. The non-characteristic fossilisation of the material however, prompted usto apply 14C-dating and XRF-analysis (X-ray fluorescence), to verify whether the white-tailed eagle indeed was part of the Tiglian Tegelen avifauna. The 14C-dating firmly placesthe fossil in the Holocene, and the XRF fingerprint of the white-tailed eagle materialdiffers significantly from the Tegelen locality material. Therefore, we can remove, basedon the fossil record, the white-tailed eagle from the faunal list of the Tiglian of Tegelen.
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Graaf et al. (2026) studied this question.
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