Porzana carolina
The sora, sora rail or Carolina crake is a small waterbird of the rail family Rallidae, sometimes also referred to as the sora rail or sora crake, that occurs throughout much of North America. The genus name Porzana is derived from Venetian terms for small rails, and the specific carolina refers to the Carolina Colony. The common name "Sora" is probably derived from a Native American language.

Elaine R. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- soraPBDB
- Sits inside
- PorzanaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
- Mass
- 8.9 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 1.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
18 occurrences of Porzana carolina 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
18 occurrences- Pleistocene92%
- 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Porzana carolina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Porzana carolina and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Porzana carolina and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
800 taxa- Falco sparverius11 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps11 sites
- Colaptes auratus10 sites
- Zenaida macroura9 sites
- Agelaius phoeniceus8 sites
- Athene cunicularia8 sites
- Tyto alba8 sites
- Aenocyon dirus7 sites
- Anas crecca7 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos7 sites
- Megascops asio7 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus7 sites
- Rallus limicola7 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos6 sites
- Aythya collaris6 sites
- Bubo virginianus6 sites
- Buteo6 sites
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala6 sites
- Meleagris gallopavo6 sites
- Scalopus aquaticus6 sites
- Spatula clypeata6 sites
- Accipiter cooperii5 sites
- Anas acuta5 sites
- Charadrius vociferus5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Porzana carolina, 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
15 references- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula3
- Fossil birds from the Dominican Republic2
- The late Quaternary bird community of New Providence, Bahamas1
- Tropical marsh and savanna of the late Pleistocene in northeastern Sonora, Mexico1
- The early and middle Pleistocene avifauna from Porcupine Cave1
- Late Quaternary fossil vertebrates from the Cayman Islands1
- Studies on Fossil and Extant Vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling's) Island, Bahamas1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- Fossil and subfossil birds from the Bahamas1
- The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru1
- The Clark's Cave bone deposit and the Late Pleistocene paleoecology of the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Haile, Florida1
Each of the 18 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. 3 further references are not listed. 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 content3
Picture of Porzana carolina
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Elaine R. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Porzana carolina · FMNH:Birds:500401
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, “Sora (bird)”
- 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 itPorzana through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)