Fulica newtonii
The Mascarene coot is an extinct species of coot that inhabited the Mascarene islands of Mauritius and Réunion. Long known from subfossil bones found in the Mare aux Songes swamp on the former island, but only assumed from descriptions to also have been present on the latter, remains have more recently been found on Réunion also. Early travellers' reports from Mauritius were, in reverse, generally assumed to refer to common moorhens, but it seems that this species only colonized the island after the extinction of the endemic coot.
Louveau (= Marcel Eugene Louveau-Rouveyre?), published by Alphonse Milne-Edwards · Public Domain · 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
- Mascarene cootPBDB
- Sits inside
- FulicaPBDB
- 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 most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Fulica newtonii on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
6 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Fulica newtonii and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Fulica newtonii and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
54 taxa- Alopochen kervazoi3 sites
- Aphanapteryx bonasia3 sites
- Ardenna pacifica3 sites
- Lophopsittacus mauritianus3 sites
- Otus grucheti3 sites
- Phoenicopterus roseus3 sites
- Threskiornis solitarius3 sites
- Anas theodori2 sites
- Circus maillardi2 sites
- Falco duboisi2 sites
- Mascarinus mascarin2 sites
- Nesoenas duboisi2 sites
- Nesoenas mayeri2 sites
- Numenius phaeopus2 sites
- Nycticorax duboisi2 sites
- Nycticorax mauritianus2 sites
- Otus sauzieri2 sites
- Phaethon lepturus2 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri2 sites
- Raphus cucullatus2 sites
- Alectroenas nitidissimus1 site
- Allopeas1 site
- Alopochen mauritianus1 site
- Aythya1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Fulica newtonii, 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
5 references- The avifauna of Réunion Island (Mascarene Islands) at the time of the arrival of the first Europeans2
- Mid-Holocene vertebrate bone Concentration-Lagerstätte on oceanic island Mauritius provides a window into the ecosystem of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus)1
- A new genus, three new species and two new records of extinct Holocene birds from Réunion Island, Indian Ocean1
- On additional bones of the Dodo and other extinct birds of Mauritius obtained by Mr. Théodore Sauzier1
- Memoire sur une espèce éteinte du genre Fulica qui habitait autrefois l'île Maurice.1
Each of the 6 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 Fulica newtonii
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Louveau (= Marcel Eugene Louveau-Rouveyre?), published by Alphonse Milne-Edwards
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Fulica newtonii 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 itFulica through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Milne-Edwards 1867)