Sagittariidae

Quality 0.50 · 3 views · Updated 2 months ago

Family of birds

title: "Sagittariidae" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["bird-families", "birds-of-prey", "oligocene-first-appearances", "accipitriformes", "taxa-named-by-otto-finsch", "taxa-named-by-gustav-hartlaub"] description: "Family of birds" topic_path: "general/bird-families" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittariidae" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Family of birds ::

|image = Sagittarius serpentarius Sekretär.JPG |image_caption = Sagittarius serpentarius | fossil_range = Middle Oligocene–recent, |taxon = Sagittariidae |authority = Finsch & Hartlaub, 1870 | subdivision_ranks = Genera | subdivision = At least 4 genera (see text) Sagittariidae is a family of raptor with one living species—the secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius) native to Africa—and a few fossil taxa.

This single extant species has affected the fossil record of the group by ‘pulling’ the temporal range of the family to the present, an artifact called the Pull of the recent.

German naturalists Otto Finsch and Gustav Hartlaub established the taxon name as a subfamily—Sagittariinae—in 1870. Although their term postdated Gypogeranidae of Vigors (1825) and Serpentariidae of Selys Longchamps (1842), the genus name Sagittarius (described in 1783) had priority over Gypogeranus Illiger, 1811 and Serpentarius Cuvier, 1798.

Genera

There are at least four genera:

†Amanuensis Mourer-Chauviré, 2003
†Amphiserpentarius Gaillard, 1908
†Pelargopappus Stejneger, 1885
Sagittarius Hermann,1783

The genus Pelargopappus is known from Miocene deposits in France. The genus Amanuensis is known from Miocene deposits in Africa.

References

(1870). "Die Vogel Ost-Africas: Baron Carl Claus von Deer Decken's Reisen in Ost-Africa". C. F. Winter.
Bock, Walter J.. (1994). "History and Nomenclature of Avian Family-Group Names". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.
(2017). "The impact of the Pull of the Recent on the fossil record of tetrapods". Evolutionary Ecology Research.
Cécile Mourer-Chauviré. (2003). "Geology and palaeobiology of the Central and Southern Namib. Vol. 2: Paleontology of the Orange River Valley". Geological Survey of Namibia, Memoir 19.
(2016). "Avian Evolution: The Fossil Record of Birds and its Paleobiological Significance". John Wiley & Sons.
(1983). "Les Sagittariidae fossiles (Aves, Accipitriformes) de l'Oligocène des phosphorites du Quercy et du Miocène inférieur de Saint-Gérand-le-Puy". Geobios.
"Family Sagittariidae (Secretary bird)". Fossilworks.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::