Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The family occurs worldwide, often in close proximity to humans, but the greatest diversity is in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms. 118 species (34%) are at risk, [4] and 13 are extinct, [5] with the most famous examples being the dodo, a large, flightless, island bird, and the passenger pigeon, that once flocked in the billions.
The passenger pigeon was a member of the pigeon and dove family, Columbidae. The oldest known fossil of the genus is an isolated humerus (USNM 430960) known from the Lee Creek Mine in North Carolina in sediments belonging to the Yorktown Formation, dating to the Zanclean stage of the Pliocene, between 5.3 and 3.6 million years ago. [12]
This page is a list of the genera of pigeons and doves (the family Columbidae), which are a clade of bird species of cosmopolitan distribution. The group has 310 living species. The group has 310 living species.
As far as is known, the Portuguese never mentioned the bird. Nevertheless, some sources still state that the word dodo derives from the Portuguese word doudo (currently doido), meaning "fool" or "crazy". It has also been suggested that dodo was an onomatopoeic approximation of the bird's call, a two-note pigeon-like sound resembling "doo-doo". [33]
The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) recognizes 352 species in family Columbidae, the pigeons and doves. They are distributed among 50 genera. They are distributed among 50 genera. This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.
The genetic evidence was interpreted as suggesting the Southeast Asian Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) to be their closest living relative among 35 analyzed species of pigeons and doves, followed by the crowned pigeons (genus Goura) of New Guinea and the superficially dodo-like tooth-billed pigeon from Samoa. [14]
Genetically within the family of pigeons and doves, it was most closely related to the also extinct dodo of the nearby island Mauritius, the two forming the subfamily Raphinae. The Nicobar pigeon is their closest living genetic relative. Rodrigues solitaires grew to the size of swans, and demonstrated pronounced sexual dimorphism. Males were ...
The tooth-billed pigeons are the only genus (Didunculus) of the subfamily Didunculinae, in the pigeon and dove family, ().It has no close living relatives, but it has been shown to be genetically close to the dodo, [2] and the genus name Didunculus means "little dodo". [3]