Californian turkey

California turkey
Temporal range: Pleistocene-Holocene
Californian turkey (lower left) and other extinct birds from the La Brea Tar Pits
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Galliformes
Family:Phasianidae
Genus:Meleagris
Species: M. californica
Binomial name
Meleagris californica
(Miller, 1909)

The Californian turkey (Meleagris californica) is an extinct species of turkey indigenous to the Pleistocene and early Holocene of California. It became extinct about 10,000 years ago.[1]

Fossil evidence indicates that the Californian turkey was stockier than the wild turkey of the eastern United States, with a shorter, wider beak, but was largely similar otherwise. It is a very common fossil in the La Brea tar pits.

There is some evidence that the Asiatic human invasion of the New World contributed to the extinction of this species, whose bones are found in remnants of their early camps.[2]

This species was originally described as a type of peacock, by its discoverer in 1909, and placed in the genus Pavo with that bird. Years later he reclassified it as an intermediate between the peacock and the ocellated turkey. But it eventually was seen as a close relative of modern living turkeys.

References

  1. ↑ California Department of Fish and Game. Wild Turkey Guide 2005.
  2. ↑ Extinct Turkeys


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