The turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, native to North America. There are two extant turkey species: the wild turkey of eastern and central North America and the ocellated turkey of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Males of both turkey species have a distinctive fleshy wattle, called a snood, that hangs from the top of the beak. They are among the largest birds in their ranges. As with many large ground-feeding birds, the male is bigger and much more colorful than the female.
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 reared by humans for their meat and eggs, or hunted as game birds.
Smilodon is an extinct genus of felids. It is one of the best known saber-toothed predators and prehistoric mammals. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats, belonging to the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae, with an estimated date of divergence from the ancestor of living cats around 20 million years ago. Smilodon was one of the last surviving machairodonts alongside the distantly related Homotherium. Smilodon lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene epoch. The genus was named in 1842 based on fossils from Brazil; the generic name means "scalpel" or "two-edged knife" combined with "tooth". Three species are recognized today: S. gracilis, S. fatalis, and S. populator. The two latter species were probably descended from S. gracilis, which itself probably evolved from Megantereon. The hundreds of specimens obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles constitute the largest collection of Smilodon fossils.
The Phasianidae are a family of heavy, ground-living birds, which includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, turkeys, Old World quail, and peafowl. The family includes many of the most popular gamebirds. The family includes 185 species divided into 54 genera. It was formerly broken up into two subfamilies, the Phasianinae and the Perdicinae. However, this treatment is now known to be paraphyletic and polyphyletic, respectively, and more recent evidence supports breaking it up into two subfamilies: Rollulinae and Phasianinae, with the latter containing multiple tribes within two clades. The New World quail (Odontophoridae) and guineafowl (Numididae) were formerly sometimes included in this family, but are now typically placed in families of their own; conversely, grouse and turkeys, formerly often treated as distinct families, are now known to be deeply nested within Phasianidae, so they are now included in the present family.
La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark.
The dire wolf is an extinct canine. The dire wolf lived in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. The species was named in 1858, four years after the first specimen had been found. Two subspecies are recognized: Aenocyon dirus guildayi and Aenocyon dirus dirus. The largest collection of its fossils has been obtained from the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
The American lion, with the species name meaning "savage" or "cruel", also called the North American lion) is an extinct pantherine cat native to North America during the Late Pleistocene from around 130,000 to 12,800 years ago. Genetic evidence suggests that its closest living relative is the lion, with the American lion representing an offshoot from the lineage of the largely Eurasian cave lion, from which it is suggested to have split around 165,000 years ago. Its fossils have been found across North America, from Canada to Mexico. It was about 25% larger than the modern lion, making it one of the largest known felids to ever exist, and an important apex predator.
Camelops is an extinct genus of camel that lived in North and Central America, ranging from Alaska to Honduras, from the middle Pliocene to the end of the Pleistocene. It is more closely related to living camels than to lamines, making it a true camel of the Camelini tribe. Its name is derived from the Ancient Greek κάμηλος and ὄψ, i.e. "camel-face".
Teratornithidae is an extinct family of very large birds of prey that lived in North and South America from the Late Oligocene to Late Pleistocene. They include some of the largest known flying birds. Its members are known as teratorns.
Euphagus is a small genus of American blackbirds. It contains two extant species: Brewer's blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus, and rusty blackbird E. carolinus.
Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
Paramylodon is an extinct genus of ground sloth of the family Mylodontidae endemic to North America during the Pliocene through Pleistocene epochs, living from around ~4.9 Mya–12,000 years ago.
Buteogallus daggetti, occasionally called "Daggett's eagle" or the "walking eagle", is an extinct species of long-legged hawk which lived in southwest North America during the Pleistocene. Initially believed to be some sort of carrion-eating eagle, it was for some time placed in the distinct genus Wetmoregyps, named for Alexander Wetmore. It probably resembled a larger version of the modern-day savanna hawk, with its long legs possibly used like the secretarybird of Africa to hunt for small reptiles from a safe distance. It died out about 13,000 years ago.
The convex-billed cowbird is an extinct species of bird in the family Icteridae, described in 1947 by Alden H. Miller. It is the only member of its genus, Pandanaris.
Oraristix brea, the La Brea owl, is an extinct owl reported from the Upper Pleistocene asphalt deposits of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. It was first described in 1933 by Hildegarde Howard as Strix brea, but this extinct owl was recently placed into its own genus by Campbell and Bocheński (2010). The La Brea owl has also been found in the Upper Pleistocene asphalt deposits of Carpinteria, California. Oraristrix brea is interpreted as more terrestrial in habits than forest owls because, compared to North American species of Bubo and Strix, it had longer legs relative to its wingspan.
Hildegarde Howard was an American pioneer in paleornithology. She was mentored by the famous ornithologist, Joseph Grinnell, at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) and in avian paleontology. She was well known for her discoveries in the La Brea Tar Pits, among them the Rancho La Brea eagles. She discovered and described Pleistocene flightless waterfowl at the prehistoric Ballona wetlands of coastal Los Angeles County at Playa del Rey. In 1953, Howard became the third woman to be awarded the Brewster Medal. She was the first woman president of the Southern California Academy of Sciences. Hildegarde wrote 150 papers throughout her career.
A list of prehistoric and extinct species whose fossils have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits, located in present-day Hancock Park, a city park on the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire district in Los Angeles, California.
The Beringian wolf is an extinct population of wolf that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. The Beringian wolf is an ecomorph of the gray wolf and has been comprehensively studied using a range of scientific techniques, yielding new information on their prey species and feeding behaviors. It has been determined that these wolves are morphologically distinct from modern North American wolves and genetically basal to most modern and extinct wolves. The Beringian wolf has not been assigned a subspecies classification and its relationship with the extinct European cave wolf is not clear.
Capromeryx was a genus of dwarf pronghorns (Antilocapridae) that originated in North America during the Pliocene about 5 million years ago. The closest living relative and only surviving member of the family is the North American pronghorn.
