Numida meleagris

The helmeted guinea fowl is the best known of the guinea fowl bird family, Numididae, and the only member of the genus Numida. It is native to Africa, mainly south of the Sahara, and has been widely introduced, as a domesticated species, into the West Indies, North America, Colombia, Brazil, Australia and Europe.

Numida meleagris

Charles J. Sharp · 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
helmeted guineafowlPBDB
Sits inside
NumidaPBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Galliformes
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Galliformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Mass
1.59 kgWikidata

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.

Pleistocene — about 2 of 12 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 10 of 12 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 10 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

12 occurrences of Numida meleagris 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

12 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.

Found in

1 formation

Nubia — 16.25°N, 33.75°E

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The named rock units Numida meleagris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Numida meleagris and its relatives

Holocene

Where Numida meleagris and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

238 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Numida meleagris, 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

8 references

Each of the 12 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 content2

Picture of Numida meleagris

Credit
Charles J. Sharp
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
MooreLab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itNumida through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)