Centropus

A coucal is one of about 30 species of birds in the cuckoo family. All of them belong in the subfamily Centropodinae and the genus Centropus. Unlike many Old World cuckoos, coucals are not brood parasites, though they do have their own reproductive peculiarity: all members of the genus are sex-role reversed, so that the smaller male provides most of the parental care. Male pheasant coucals invest in building the nest, incubate for the most part and take a major role in feeding the young. At least one coucal species, the black coucal, is polyandrous.

Centropus

Davidvraju · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
CuculidaePBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Cuculidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Cuculidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Cuculidae

Time the record covers

At least 33 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 0 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 4 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences35–33 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.3–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences33.9 Mya11.7 ka38.5 Mya0 Mya

4 occurrences of Centropus 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

4 occurrences

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.

Centropus and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Centropus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

114 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Centropus, 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

4 references

Each of the 4 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 content2

Picture of Centropus

Credit
Davidvraju
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
MooreLab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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

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 itCuculidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Illiger 1811