Messelornithidae

Messelornithidae is an extinct clade of gruiform birds, closely related to modern rails. The fossil record are from the Paleocene to the early Oligocene of Europe and North America.

Messelornithidae

Ghedoghedo · 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
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 3.2 million years on record.

The record covers at least 59.24 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 61.66 Mya to 48.07 Mya.

Paleocene — about 3 of 6 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 3 of 6 occurrencesEocene62–61 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences61–61 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences61–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences59–59 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences56–56 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences56–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–54 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences54–54 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences54–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–52 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences52–52 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences52–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–49 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences49–49 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences49–48 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences59.24 Mya56 Mya62.2 Mya47.6 Mya

6 occurrences of Messelornithidae on record, most of them in the Paleocene. 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

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

3 formations

Fur — 56.88°N, 8.68°ETielt — 51.01°N, 3.23°ENanjemoy — 38.28°N, 77.37°W

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The named rock units Messelornithidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Messelornithidae and its relatives

Paleocene

Where Messelornithidae and its relatives were recorded in the Paleocene.

Found in the same rock

176 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Messelornithidae, 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 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 Messelornithidae

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

No 3D scan of Messelornithidae 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 itGruiformes through timeFormations of the PaleoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.