Cuculidae

Cuckoos and Roadrunners are birds in the family Cuculidae, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes. The cuckoo family includes the common cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals, and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae, respectively. The cuckoo order Cuculiformes is one of three that make up the Otidimorphae, the other two being the turacos and the bustards. The family Cuculidae contains 150 species, which are divided into 33 genera.

Cuculidae

Uncredited · 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
cuckooPBDB
Sits inside
CuculiformesPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB
Life habit
volantPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 48 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.

Paleocene — about 0 of 96 occurrencesEocene — about 5 of 96 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 96 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 3 of 96 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 96 occurrencesPleistocene — about 42 of 96 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 2 occurrences34–32 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences32–30 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences30–29 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–17 Mya — about 2 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.8–1.9 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 86 occurrences48.07 Mya11.7 ka57 Mya0 Mya

96 occurrences of Cuculidae on record. 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

96 occurrences

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

8 formations

Alachua — 29.70°N, 82.60°WCypress Hills — 49.51°N, 108.83°WCampagne-Calavon — 43.93°N, 5.63°ENuapua — 20.75°S, 63.07°WPawnee Creek — 40.90°N, 103.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.30°WItaboraí — 22.84°S, 42.88°WLondon Clay — 50.78°N, 0.68°W

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The named rock units Cuculidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 87 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

1,740 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 70 sites for Cuculidae, 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

56 references

Each of the 96 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. 44 further references are not listed. 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 Cuculidae

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Cuculidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

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 itCuculiformes through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1820