There are many ways to identify individual birds. Historically, the most common method has been to place a band around the tarsometatarsus. The band can be closed, if placed on a neonate ...

The tarsometatarsus, or ankle bone, of a thick-billed parrot. The bone was collected at an archeological dig in New Mexico during the 1950s. UT doctoral student John Moretti identified the bone as ...

called the tarsometatarsus, and they'd been found on their own, without other, flashier body parts like skulls and claws. And while the bones were large for bird tarsometatarsi, they were still ...