Gallirallus lafresnayanus
The New Caledonian rail is a large and drab flightless rail endemic to the island of New Caledonia in the Pacific. It is Critically Endangered, may have gone extinct many decades ago already, and if it still exists it is one of the least-known living bird species.
Vassil · CC0 · 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
- New Caledonian railPBDB
- Sits inside
- GallirallusPBDB
- 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.
9 occurrences of Gallirallus lafresnayanus 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
9 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.
Gallirallus lafresnayanus and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Gallirallus lafresnayanus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
64 taxa- Sylviornis neocaledoniae8 sites
- Turnix varia novaecaledoniae7 sites
- Porphyrio kukwiedei6 sites
- Accipiter efficax4 sites
- Aegotheles savesi4 sites
- Columba vitiensis4 sites
- Ducula goliath4 sites
- Megapodius molistructor4 sites
- Mekosuchus inexpectatus4 sites
- Ninox novaeseelandiae4 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus4 sites
- Tyto alba4 sites
- Tyto letocarti4 sites
- Zapornia tabuensis4 sites
- Caloenas canacorum3 sites
- Collocalia esculenta3 sites
- Eunymphicus cornutus3 sites
- Passeriformes3 sites
- Rhynochetos3 sites
- Todiramphus sanctus3 sites
- Urodynamis taitensis3 sites
- Accipiter fasciatus2 sites
- Accipiter haplochrous2 sites
- Aerodramus spodiopygius2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Gallirallus lafresnayanus, 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- Fossil birds from late Quaternary deposits in New Caledonia5
- Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves4
Each of the 9 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 Gallirallus lafresnayanus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vassil
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Gallirallus lafresnayanus 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 itGallirallus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Verreaux and des Murs 1860)