Gallirallus owstoni

The Guam rail, known locally and in Chamorro as ko'ko', is a small, terrestrial bird endemic to Guam in the Rallidae family. They are one of the island's few remaining endemic bird species. The species became extinct in the wild in the early 1980s when biologists captured the remaining wild population to establish a breeding program. They have since been successfully introduced to the nearby Rota and Cocos islands. In 2019, they became the second bird species to be reclassified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature from Extinct in the Wild to Critically Endangered.

Gallirallus owstoni

Greg Hume · CC BY-SA 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
Also called
Guam 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.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 0 of 1 occurrenceHolocene — about 1 of 1 occurrence17 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence512 ka0 Mya

1 occurrence of Gallirallus owstoni 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

1 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.

Gallirallus owstoni and its relatives

Holocene

Where Gallirallus owstoni and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

20 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Gallirallus owstoni, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Gallirallus owstoni

Credit
Greg Hume
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gallirallus owstoni was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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. Rothschild 1895