Coua cursor
The running coua is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. It is endemic to Madagascar.

Francesco Veronesi ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesco_veronesi/ ) · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- running couaPBDB
- Sits inside
- CouaPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Cuculidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Cuculidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Cuculidae
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Coua cursor on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene46%
- Holocene55%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Coua cursor and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Coua cursor and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
84 taxa- Coracopsis vasa2 sites
- Corvus albus2 sites
- Coua cristata2 sites
- Numida meleagris2 sites
- Otus rutilus2 sites
- Ploceus sakalava2 sites
- Streptopelia picturata2 sites
- Turnix nigricollis2 sites
- Tyto alba2 sites
- Upupa marginata2 sites
- Accipiter madagascariensis1 site
- Acrantophis1 site
- Aepyornis1 site
- Aldabrachelys1 site
- Anhinga melanogaster1 site
- Apus1 site
- Archaeolemur majori1 site
- Artamella viridis1 site
- Asio madagascariensis1 site
- Athene superciliaris1 site
- Bos indicus1 site
- Buteo brachypterus1 site
- Canis familiaris1 site
- Cheirogaleus medius1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Coua cursor, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Bird fossils from Ankilitelo Cave: inference about Holocene environmental changes in southwestern Madagascar1
- New findings at Andrahomana Cave, southeastern Madagascar1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Coua cursor
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Francesco Veronesi ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesco_veronesi/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCoua through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Grandidier 1867