Lymnocryptes minimus
The jack snipe or jacksnipe is a small stocky wader. It is the smallest snipe, and the only member of the genus Lymnocryptes. Features such as its sternum and its continuous 'bobbing up and down' make it quite distinct from other snipes or woodcocks.

Morhaf kamal aljanee · 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
- jack snipePBDB
- Sits inside
- LymnocryptesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes
- Mass
- 53.7 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Lymnocryptes minimus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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.
Lymnocryptes minimus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lymnocryptes minimus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
42 taxa- Actitis hypoleucos1 site
- Alauda arvensis1 site
- Alaudidae1 site
- Anas acuta1 site
- Anas platyrhynchos1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Anguis fragilis1 site
- Bufo bufo1 site
- Bufo calamita1 site
- Calidris binagadensis1 site
- Calidris falcinellus1 site
- Calidris minuta1 site
- Calidris pugnax1 site
- Charadriiformes1 site
- Corvus corax1 site
- Corvus monedula1 site
- Coturnix coturnix1 site
- Erithacus rubecula1 site
- Falco peregrinus1 site
- Falco tinnunculus1 site
- Fringillidae1 site
- Galerida cristata1 site
- Gallinago gallinago1 site
- Garrulus glandarius1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Lymnocryptes minimus, 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
3 references- Late Pleistocene birds from Binagada (Azerbaijan) in collection of the National Museum of Natural History (Kyiv, Ukraine)1
- Tigriornis leucolopha1
- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
Each of the 3 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 Lymnocryptes minimus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Morhaf kamal aljanee
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lymnocryptes minimus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Jack snipe”
- 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 itLymnocryptes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Brünnich 1764)