Great Tinamou

About the Great Tinamou

The great tinamou (Tinamus major) is a species of tinamou ground bird native to Central and South America. There are several subspecies, mostly differentiated by their coloration. The great tinamou was described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in his Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. Marcgrave used the name Macucagua. The French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon described and illustrated the great tinamou in 1778 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from specimens collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. He simplified Marcgrave's name to Magoua. When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the great tinamou and placed it with all the grouse like birds in the genus Tetrao. He coined the binomial name Tetrao major and cited the earlier authors. The great tinamou is now placed with four other species in the genus Tinamus that was introduced in 1783 by the French naturalist Johann Hermann. Hermann based his name on "Les Tinamous" used by Buffon. The word "Tinamú" in the Carib language of French Guiana was used for the tinamous.

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