The bird genus Balearica (also called the crowned cranes or Balearic cranes) contains two extant species in the crane family Gruidae: the black crowned crane ( B. pavonina) and the grey crowned crane ( B. regulorum).
The species today occur only in Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, and are the only cranes that can nest in trees. This habitat is one reason the relatively small Balearica cranes are believed to closely resemble the ancestral members of the Gruidae.
Like all cranes, they eat , , and small .
Taxonomy
The genus
Balearica was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the black crowned crane (
Balearica pavonina) as the
type species.
The name is from the Latin
Baliaricus for "of the Balearic Islands".
The crane family (Gruidae) is divided into the subfamily Gruinae of and the subfamily Balearicinae of crowned cranes.
Extant species
Fossil record
Crowned cranes seem to have been more widespread prehistorically. Compared to the true cranes, genus
Grus, which were always common in the
Holarctic and adjacent regions, the present genus appears to have had a more Atlantic distribution, ranging into Europe and North America; it is not known from the fossil record of Asia and South America, as none have yet been discovered.
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Balearica rummeli (Early Miocene of Germany) – formerly Basityto
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Balearica excelsa (Early–Middle Miocene of France) – formerly Grus and Ornithocnemus
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Balearica exigua (Miocene of Nebraska)
