Gallirallus philippensis
The buff-banded rail is a distinctively coloured, highly dispersive, medium-sized rail of the rail family, Rallidae. This species comprises several subspecies found throughout much of Australasia and the south-west Pacific region, including the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and numerous smaller islands, covering a range of latitudes from the tropics to the subantarctic. The species was formerly placed in the genus Hypotaenidia.

JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- buff-banded 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 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.
38 occurrences of Gallirallus philippensis 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
38 occurrences- Pleistocene15%
- Holocene85%
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 the same rock
294 taxa- Gallus gallus11 sites
- Didunculus placopedetes9 sites
- Passeriformes9 sites
- Ducula pacifica8 sites
- Porphyrio porphyrio7 sites
- Phaethon lepturus6 sites
- Procellariidae6 sites
- Tyto alba6 sites
- Zapornia tabuensis6 sites
- Aerodramus spodiopygius5 sites
- Anas superciliosa5 sites
- Anous stolidus5 sites
- Ardenna pacifica5 sites
- Columbidae5 sites
- Eclectus infectus5 sites
- Pluvialis fulva5 sites
- Pseudobulweria rostrata5 sites
- Collocalia esculenta4 sites
- Corvus4 sites
- Ducula4 sites
- Megapodius4 sites
- Megapodius alimentum4 sites
- Porphyrio4 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus samoensis4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 38 sites for Gallirallus philippensis, 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
15 references- Rails (Aves: Rallidae: Gallirallus) from prehistoric sites in the Kingdom of Tonga, including a description of a new species8
- Fossil and archaeological avifauna of Niue Island, Pacific Ocean6
- Prehistoric avifaunas from the Kingdom of Tonga3
- Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, south Pacific3
- Avifauna from the Emily Bay settlement site, Norfolk Island: a preliminary account3
- Prehistoric birds from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea: extinctions on a large Melanesian island3
- Holocene fossil bird remains from subantarctic Macquarie Island2
- Extinction, biogeography, and human exploitation of birds on Tikopia and Anuta, Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands2
- Fossil birds from late Quaternary deposits in New Caledonia2
- Avifauna from the Teouma Lapita site, Efate Island, Vanuatu, including a new genus and species of megapode1
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact1
Each of the 38 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. 3 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 Gallirallus philippensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1766)