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Clapperton's spurfowl

species of bird

Specimen drawers, botanical folios and brass scientific instruments under study light
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 30, 2025
Entity authorityQ1275889
Source-derived summary

Clapperton's spurfowl (Pternistis clappertoni) is a species of bird in the family Phasianidae.

It is found in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda.

Taxonomy

Clapperton's spurfowl was described in 1826 by John George Children and Nicholas Aylward Vigors in an appendix to the Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa by the explorers Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton. Children and Vigors chose to honour Clapperton and coined the binomial name Francolinus clappertoni. In their publication Children and Vigors did not specify where the specimen had been collected but the type locality was later designated as Borno in northeast Nigeria. The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2019 found that Clapperton's spurfowl is sister to Harwood's spurfowl.

Two subspecies are now recognised:

P. c. clappertoni (Children & Vigors, 1826) — Mali to south Sudan, east South Sudan, northeast Uganda and west Ethiopia

P. c.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Clapperton's spurfowl” as species of bird. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clapperton's, spurfowl and species.

Editorial reviewUseful for establishing the present vocabulary of the subject while preserving a route back to the evidence on which that vocabulary rests. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1826, 1832, 2019—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Clapperton's, spurfowl and species providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Clapperton's spurfowl”, the useful work is to connect “species of bird” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1275889. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1826, 1832 and 2019.

Critical limits

Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Clapperton's spurfowl primary sources, Clapperton's spurfowl archive and Clapperton's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Clapperton's spurfowl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.