Neophema
The genus Neophema is an Australian genus with six or seven species. They are small, dull green parrots differentiated by patches of other colours, and are commonly known as grass parrots. The genus has some sexual dichromatism, with males having brighter hues.

Daniel Wehmeyer at German Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- PlatycercinaePBDB
- Diet
- granivorePBDB, for Psittacidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Psittacidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Psittacidae
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.
2 occurrences of Neophema 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
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.
Neophema and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Neophema and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
82 taxa- Corvus2 sites
- Gallirallus philippensis2 sites
- Tribonyx mortierii2 sites
- Accipiter fasciatus1 site
- Acrobates pygmaeus1 site
- Aegotheles cristatus1 site
- Anas superciliosa1 site
- Anatidae1 site
- Antechinus flavipes1 site
- Anthochaera carunculata1 site
- Anthochaera chrysoptera1 site
- Austrelaps superbus1 site
- Aves1 site
- Bettongia lesueur1 site
- Cacatua tenuirostris1 site
- Cercartetus lepidus1 site
- Cercartetus nanus1 site
- Charadrius bicinctus1 site
- Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae1 site
- Cinclosoma punctatum1 site
- Conilurus1 site
- Coturnix1 site
- Coturnix pectoralis1 site
- Cracticidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Neophema, 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
2 references- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Fossil avian assemblage of Pitfall Origin from Holocene sediments in Amphitheatre Cave (G-2), South-western Victoria, Australia1
Each of the 2 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 Neophema
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Daniel Wehmeyer at German Wikipedia
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Neophema”
- 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 itPlatycercinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Salvadori 1891