Zenaida aurita
The Zenaida dove is the type species of the genus Zenaida, member of the bird family Columbidae, which includes doves and pigeons. Its range is found throughout the Caribbean islands, and along the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. It is the national bird of Anguilla.

D. Gordon E. Robertson · 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
- zenaida dovePBDB
- Sits inside
- ZenaidaPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, granivorePBDB, for Columbidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Columbidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Columbidae
- Mass
- 159 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.
23 occurrences of Zenaida aurita 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
23 occurrences- Pleistocene45%
- Holocene55%
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.
Zenaida aurita and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Zenaida aurita and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
273 taxa- Patagioenas squamosa13 sites
- Patagioenas leucocephala11 sites
- Margarops fuscatus8 sites
- Athene cunicularia7 sites
- Columbina passerina7 sites
- Ionornis martinica6 sites
- Tyrannus dominicensis6 sites
- Columbidae5 sites
- Corvus nasicus5 sites
- Passeriformes5 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
- Caracara creightoni4 sites
- Eudocimus albus4 sites
- Falco sparverius4 sites
- Geotrygon chrysia4 sites
- Mimus gundlachii4 sites
- Mimus polyglottos4 sites
- Nyctanassa violacea4 sites
- Patagioenas inornata4 sites
- Petrochelidon fulva4 sites
- Porzana carolina4 sites
- Psittacus leucocephalus4 sites
- Saurothera merlini4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Zenaida aurita, 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
14 references- The fossil record and history of doves on Bermuda (Aves: Columbidae)4
- Archaeology of Trants, Montserrat. Part 5. Prehistoric avifauna3
- Exceptionally well preserved late Quaternary plant and vertebrate fossils from a blue hole on Abaco, The Bahamas2
- Late Quaternary fossil vertebrates from the Cayman Islands2
- Fossil and subfossil birds from the Bahamas2
- Bird remains from the caves of Porto Rico2
- A late-Holocene bird community from Hispaniola: Refining the chronology of vertebrate extinction in the West Indies1
- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas1
- Fossil vertebrates from Antigua, Lesser Antilles: evidence for late Holocene human-caused extinctions in the West Indies1
- Fossil birds from the Dominican Republic1
- Pleistocene birds from New Providence Island, Bahamas1
- A record for the black-capped petrel, Pterodroma hasitata, in Martinique1
Each of the 23 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. 2 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 Zenaida aurita
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- D. Gordon E. Robertson
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itZenaida through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Temminck 1809)