Zapornia tabuensis
The spotless crake is a species of bird in the rail family, Rallidae. It is widely distributed species occurring from the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand across the southern Pacific Ocean to the Marquesas Islands to the south east along the Tuamotus island chain to Pitcairn Oeno island.

Frankzed Derivative work: Osado · 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- Also called
- spotless crakePBDB
- Sits inside
- ZaporniaPBDB
- 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 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.
26 occurrences of Zapornia tabuensis 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
26 occurrences- Pleistocene4%
- Holocene96%
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.
Zapornia tabuensis and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Zapornia tabuensis and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
156 taxa- Gallus gallus11 sites
- Aerodramus spodiopygius8 sites
- Aplonis tabuensis6 sites
- Ducula pacifica6 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis6 sites
- Anous stolidus5 sites
- Columbidae5 sites
- Phaethon lepturus5 sites
- Pseudobulweria rostrata5 sites
- Rattus exulans5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
- Urodynamis taitensis5 sites
- Alopecoenas erythropterus4 sites
- Ardenna pacifica4 sites
- Columba vitiensis4 sites
- Ducula4 sites
- Ducula galeata4 sites
- Ducula goliath4 sites
- Gallirallus lafresnayanus4 sites
- Passeriformes4 sites
- Porphyrio kukwiedei4 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus4 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus samoensis4 sites
- Pteropus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 26 sites for Zapornia tabuensis, 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
12 references- Fossil and archaeological avifauna of Niue Island, Pacific Ocean8
- Extinct and extirpated birds from Aitutaki and Atiu, southern Cook Islands4
- Faunal extinction and human habitation in New Caledonia: initial results and implications of new research at the Pindai Caves3
- Extinction of birds in eastern Polynesia: A review of the record, and comparison with other Pacific island groups2
- Two new species of rails (Aves: Rallidae) from Mangaia, southern Cook Islands2
- Avifauna from the Teouma Lapita site, Efate Island, Vanuatu, including a new genus and species of megapode1
- Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, south Pacific1
- Prehistoric birds from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea: extinctions on a large Melanesian island1
- Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact1
- Extinction and biogeography of birds on Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia1
- Prehistoric extinction of birds on Mangaia, Cook Islands, Polynesia1
- Fossil birds from late Quaternary deposits in New Caledonia1
Each of the 26 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 Zapornia tabuensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Frankzed Derivative work: Osado
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Zapornia tabuensis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itZapornia through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gmelin 1789)