Rallus
Rallus is a genus of wetland birds of the rail family. Sometimes, the genera Lewinia and Gallirallus are included in it. Six of the species are found in the Americas, and the three species found in Eurasia, Africa and Madagascar are very closely related to each other, suggesting they are descended from a single invasion of a New World ancestor.

Uncredited · 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
- RallidaePBDB
- 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 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.1 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 0 Mya.
86 occurrences of Rallus 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
86 occurrences- Miocene1%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene68%
- Holocene28%
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
6 formations
- Tamiami Formation4
- Fort Thompson Formation3
- Wicomico Formation3
- Bermont Formation1
- Sajovolgyi Formation1
- Okeechobee Formation1
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The named rock units Rallus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 73 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Rallus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Rallus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,241 taxa- Podilymbus podiceps20 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos17 sites
- Equus15 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus13 sites
- Spatula clypeata13 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus12 sites
- Dasypus bellus12 sites
- Fulica americana12 sites
- Anas11 sites
- Branta canadensis11 sites
- Buteo11 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos11 sites
- Rana11 sites
- Zenaida macroura11 sites
- Anas crecca10 sites
- Ardea herodias10 sites
- Bubo virginianus10 sites
- Colaptes auratus10 sites
- Falco sparverius10 sites
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala10 sites
- Porzana carolina10 sites
- Pterodroma10 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus10 sites
- Tyto alba10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 68 sites for Rallus, 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
44 references- Five new extinct species of rails (Aves: Gruiformes: Rallidae) from the Macaronesian Islands (North Atlantic Ocean)21
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula9
- Prehistoric human impacts on California birds: evidence from the Emeryville shellmoumd avifauna3
- Middle Pleistocene (early Rancholabrean) vertebrates and associated marine and non-marine invertebrates from Oldsmar, Pinnellas County, Florida3
- Two new late Blancan avifaunas from Florida and the extinction of wetland birds in the Plio-Pleistocene3
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida3
- The Pleistocene avifauna of Arredondo, Florida3
- The ornithological remains from Marathousa 1 (Middle Pleistocene; Megalopolis Basin, Greece)2
- The Pleistocene vertebrate fauna of Reddick, Florida2
- The fossil avifauna of Itchtucknee River, Florida2
- The avifauna of the Pleistocene in Florida2
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
Each of the 86 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. 32 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 Rallus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Rallus 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, “Rallus”
- 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 itRallidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758