''Gallinuloides'' is a prehistoric

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of primitive

galliform Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

. It lived about 48

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

was found in a

Green River Formation The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine ...

deposit in

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

.Ksepka, D.T. (2009) Broken gears in the avian molecular clock: new phylogenetic analyses support stem galliform status for ''Gallinuloides wyomingensis'' and rallid affinities for ''Amitabha urbsinterdictensis''. ''Cladistics'' 25(2):173-197. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2009.00250.x Gallinuloides fossil

The former ''Gallinuloides prentici'' was eventually placed (after a brief stint in '' Grus'') in a distinct genus '' Paragrus''; it is no galliform but belongs to the

Geranoididae Geranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds.Gerald Mayr (2009). Paleogene Fossil Birds Recent research shows ...

(Lambrecht 1933:520).

References

* Lambrecht, Kálmán (1933): ''Handbuch der Palaeornithologie''. Gebrüder Bornträger, Berlin. Eocene birds Bird genera Paleogene birds of North America Fossil taxa described in 1900 {{paleo-bird-stub