Aphanocrex podarces
The Saint Helena rail is an extinct species of flightless rail from Saint Helena. It disappeared from the island in the early 16th century.
Olson, Storrs L. · Public Domain · 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
- Saint Helena railPBDB
- Sits inside
- AphanocrexPBDB
- 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.
6 occurrences of Aphanocrex podarces on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene67%
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.
Aphanocrex podarces and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Aphanocrex podarces and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
21 taxa- Pelagodroma marina6 sites
- Pterodroma rupinarum5 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri5 sites
- Bulweria bifax4 sites
- Onychoprion fuscatus4 sites
- Fregata ariel3 sites
- Gygis alba3 sites
- Porzana astrictocarpus3 sites
- Charadrius sanctaehelenae2 sites
- Dysmoropelia dekarchiskos2 sites
- Oceanodroma castro2 sites
- Puffinus pacificoides2 sites
- Sula dactylatra2 sites
- Sula sula2 sites
- Ardenna grisea1 site
- Fregata minor1 site
- Labidura herculeana1 site
- Larus1 site
- Phaethon aethereus1 site
- Puffinus1 site
- Upupa antaios1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Aphanocrex podarces, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- Evolution of the rails of the South Atlantic Islands (Aves: Rallidae)5
- The extinct avifauna of St. Helena Island1
Each of the 6 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 Aphanocrex podarces
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Olson, Storrs L.
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aphanocrex podarces 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 itAphanocrex through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Wetmore 1963)