Pelican

Description:

Pelicans are a genus of large water birds in the family Pelecanidae. They are characterised by a long beak and large throat pouch used in catching, and draining water from, their prey. The eight living pelican species have a patchy global distribution, ranging latitudinally from the tropics to the temperate zone, though they are absent from much of interior and southern South America as well as from polar regions and the open ocean. Fossil evidence of pelicans dates back at least 30 million years, to the remains of a beak very similar to that of modern species recovered from Oligocene strata in France.