Pici
Pici is one of the two suborders of the order Piciformes. It includes two infraorders, Ramphastides and Picides. Members of this suborder have been called "true piciforms", as the jacamars of Galbulidae and puffbirds of Bucconidae were for a time thought to be not closely related to toucans and woodpeckers, but instead to the order Coraciiformes. However, analysis of nuclear DNA confirmed that Galbuli and Pici are sister groups, and thus their similarities such as zygodactyl feet were inherited from their common ancestor. Some classifications continue to treat Galbuli as a separate order (Galbuliformes), in which case Piciformes becomes equivalent in scope to Pici.

Butterfly austral - Serge Ouachée · 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- Sits inside
- PiciformesPBDB
- 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 8.8 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 16.3 Mya.
4 occurrences of Pici on record, most of them in the Oligocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
4 occurrencesThese 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Pici has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pici and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Pici and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
394 taxa- ? Calamoideae indet.1 site
- Abadzekhia1 site
- Abadzekhia tarletskovi1 site
- Achilleodinium1 site
- Achomosphaera1 site
- Actinodaphne1 site
- Aeoliscus1 site
- Aeoliscus heinrichi1 site
- Alligator olseni1 site
- Amphechinus1 site
- Amphechinus arvernensis1 site
- Amphicyon longiramus1 site
- Amphidozotherium cayluxi1 site
- Amphiperatherium exile1 site
- Amphisbaenia1 site
- Anchitherium clarencei1 site
- Anenchelum angustum1 site
- Anguidae1 site
- Anhinga subvolans1 site
- Aniliidae1 site
- Anilioides minuatus1 site
- Apteodinium1 site
- Apterodon rauenbergensis1 site
- Araneae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Pici, 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
4 references- A tiny barbet-like bird from the Lower Oligocene of Germany: the smallest species and earliest substantial fossil record of the Pici (woodpeckers and allies)1
- The earliest fossil record of a modern-type piciform bird from the late Oligocene of Germany1
- Ducks, rails, and limicoline waders (Aves: Anseriformes, Gruiformes, Charadriiformes) from the lowermost Oligocene of Belgium1
- Becker, 19871
Each of the 4 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. 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 Pici
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Butterfly austral - Serge Ouachée
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pici 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 itPiciformes through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758