Aramidae
Aramidae is a bird family in the order Gruiformes. The limpkin is the only living member of this family, although other species are known from the fossil record, such as Papulavis annae from the Eocene of France, Aramus paludigrus from the Middle Miocene of Colombia and Badistornis aramus from the Oligocene of South Dakota, USA.

Alejandro Bayer Tamayo from Armenia, Colombia · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- limpkinPBDB
- Sits inside
- GruiformesPBDB
- 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 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 0 Mya.
12 occurrences of Aramidae 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
12 occurrences- Oligocene8%
- Miocene33%
- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene8%
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
5 formations
- Sheep Creek Formation1
- Alachua Formation1
- Snake Creek Formation1
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group1
- Brule Formation1
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The named rock units Aramidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Aramidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Aramidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
516 taxa- Aramus guarauna6 sites
- Aenocyon dirus4 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis4 sites
- Ardea alba4 sites
- Ardea herodias4 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis4 sites
- Coragyps atratus4 sites
- Gallinula chloropus4 sites
- Mammut americanum4 sites
- Meleagris gallopavo4 sites
- Phalacrocorax auritus4 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps4 sites
- Tremarctos floridanus4 sites
- Anas fulvigula3 sites
- Antigone canadensis3 sites
- Branta canadensis3 sites
- Butorides virescens3 sites
- Caracara cheriway3 sites
- Ciconia maltha3 sites
- Cygnus columbianus3 sites
- Equus3 sites
- Fulica americana3 sites
- Grus americana3 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Aramidae, 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- The diversity and biogeography of late Pleistocene birds from the lowland Neotropics1
- Collared peccary (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Tayassuidae, Pecari) from the late Pleistocene of Florida1
- Birds1
- Geology and paleontology of the Love Bone Bed from the Late Miocene of Florida1
- The fossil avifauna of Itchtucknee River, Florida1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Rock Spring, Florida1
- The fossil Birds of California1
- Fossil Bird Remains from Tertiary Deposits in the United States1
- Pre-Columbian bird remains from Venezuela1
- The avifauna of the Pleistocene in Florida1
- Additional specimens of fossil birds from the Upper Tertiary deposits of Nebraska1
- Descriptions of additional fossil birds from the Miocene of Nebraska1
Each of the 12 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 Aramidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alejandro Bayer Tamayo from Armenia, Colombia
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aramidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Aramidae”
- 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 itGruiformes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonaparte 1854