Gallirallus
Gallirallus is a genus of rails that live in the Australasian-Pacific region. The genus is characterised by an ability to colonise relatively small and isolated islands and thereafter to evolve flightless forms, many of which became extinct following Polynesian settlement.

en:User:Alan Liefting · 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- 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 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
132 occurrences of Gallirallus 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
132 occurrences- Pleistocene19%
- Holocene81%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Gallirallus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 129 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
614 taxa- Gallus gallus21 sites
- Passeriformes21 sites
- Columbidae16 sites
- Chenonetta finschi15 sites
- Coturnix novaezelandiae15 sites
- Rattus exulans15 sites
- Zapornia tabuensis15 sites
- Rallidae14 sites
- Anous stolidus13 sites
- Cyanoramphus13 sites
- Didunculus placopedetes13 sites
- Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae13 sites
- Porzana13 sites
- Phaethon lepturus12 sites
- Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae12 sites
- Ducula pacifica11 sites
- Pluvialis fulva11 sites
- Squamata11 sites
- Pachyornis elephantopus10 sites
- Pelecanoides urinatrix10 sites
- Tadorna variegata10 sites
- Anas chlorotis9 sites
- Anas superciliosa9 sites
- Apteryx9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 123 sites for Gallirallus, 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
36 references- Quaternary fossil fauna of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand13
- The history of the Chatham Islands' bird fauna of the last 7000 years - a chronicle of change and extinction12
- Rails (Aves: Rallidae: Gallirallus) from prehistoric sites in the Kingdom of Tonga, including a description of a new species11
- The prehistory of vertebrates, especially birds, on Tinian, Aguiguan, and Rota, Northern Mariana Islands11
- Prehistoric birds from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea: extinctions on a large Melanesian island7
- Fossil birds from late Quaternary deposits in New Caledonia7
- Prehistoric avifaunas from the Kingdom of Tonga6
- New species of extinct rails (Aves: Rallidae) from archaeological sites in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia6
- Fossil and archaeological avifauna of Niue Island, Pacific Ocean6
- Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves4
- Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand4
- Avifauna from the Emily Bay settlement site, Norfolk Island: a preliminary account4
Each of the 132 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. 24 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 content2
Picture of Gallirallus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- en:User:Alan Liefting
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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
- Gallirallus okinawae · YIO:71240
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gallirallus”
- 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 timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lafresnaye 1841