Crex
The corn crake, corncrake or landrail is a bird in the rail family. It breeds in Europe and Asia as far east as western China, and migrates to Africa for the Northern Hemisphere's winter. It is a medium-sized crake with buff- or grey-streaked brownish-black upperparts, chestnut markings on the wings, and blue-grey underparts with rust-coloured and white bars on the flanks and undertail. The strong bill is flesh-toned, the iris is pale brown, and the legs and feet are pale grey. Juveniles are similar in plumage to adults, and downy chicks are black, as with all rails. There are no subspecies, although individuals from the east of the breeding range tend to be slightly paler than their western counterparts. The male's call is a loud krek krek, from which the scientific name is derived. The corn crake is larger than its closest relative, the African crake, which shares its wintering range; that species is also darker-plumaged, and has a plainer face.
Alpo Roikola · CC BY 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- RallidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.09 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 8.725 Mya to 0 Mya.
10 occurrences of Crex on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
10 occurrences- Miocene9%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene77%
- Holocene10%
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.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Crex has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Crex and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Crex and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
206 taxa- Anatidae5 sites
- Perdix perdix5 sites
- Corvidae4 sites
- Falco4 sites
- Lyrurus tetrix4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Tetrao urogallus4 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos3 sites
- Corvus corax3 sites
- Coturnix coturnix3 sites
- Galliformes3 sites
- Phasianidae3 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus3 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax3 sites
- Rallidae3 sites
- Turdus3 sites
- Turdus viscivorus3 sites
- Accipitridae2 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Anas crecca2 sites
- Asio flammeus2 sites
- Aythya2 sites
- Aythya ferina2 sites
- Aythya fuligula2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Crex, 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
9 references- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate2
- Avian fossil assemblages at the onset of the LGM in the eastern Alps: A palaecological contribution from the Rio Secco Cave (Italy)1
- Exploitation of a seasonal resource: bird hunting during the late Natufian at Shubayqa 11
- The Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Llucmajor, Mallorca): a singular deposit bearing an exceptional well preserved Early Pleistocene vertebrate fauna1
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- The First Representative Vertebrate Fauna from the Late Miocene of Southern European Russia1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
- Huescar-1 (Granada, Espana): Avance de la lista de aves y consiguientes conjeturas sobre paleoambiente y paleogeografia1
- The Hunters of the Hunted? An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy1
Each of the 10 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 content2
Picture of Crex
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alpo Roikola
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Crex egregia · l-jz:JZ:98
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Corn crake”
- 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 itRallidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bechstein 1803