Didunculus placopedetes
The Tongan tooth-billed pigeon, is an extinct species of pigeon that was endemic to Tonga that lived in the Quaternary period. A related species, the tooth-billed pigeon, is the only known living species in its genus.
Historynerd2 · 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- Also called
- Tongan tooth-billed pigeonPBDB
- Sits inside
- DidunculusPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, granivorePBDB, for Columbidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Columbidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Columbidae
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.
14 occurrences of Didunculus placopedetes 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
14 occurrences- Pleistocene20%
- Holocene80%
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.
Didunculus placopedetes and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Didunculus placopedetes and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
69 taxa- Eclectus infectus9 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis9 sites
- Alopecoenas stairi6 sites
- Megapodius alimentum6 sites
- Ducula pacifica5 sites
- Megapodius5 sites
- Todiramphus chloris5 sites
- Aplonis tabuensis4 sites
- Foulehaio carunculatus4 sites
- Gallus gallus4 sites
- Lalage maculosa4 sites
- Megapodius pritchardii4 sites
- Turdus poliocephalus4 sites
- Ardenna pacifica3 sites
- Clytorhynchus vitiensis3 sites
- Columbidae3 sites
- Ducula3 sites
- Ducula david3 sites
- Ducula shutleri3 sites
- Gallirallus vekamatolu3 sites
- Megapodiidae3 sites
- Myzomela cardinalis3 sites
- Porphyrio melanotus3 sites
- Ptilinopus perousii3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Didunculus placopedetes, 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
3 references- An extinct species of tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus) from the Kingdom of Tonga, and the concept of endemism in insular landbirds10
- Prehistoric avifaunas from the Kingdom of Tonga3
- Avifauna from the Teouma Lapita site, Efate Island, Vanuatu, including a new genus and species of megapode1
Each of the 14 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 Didunculus placopedetes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Historynerd2
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Didunculus placopedetes was found in Sketchfab.
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 itDidunculus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Steadman 2006