Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Either of two long-legged birds (Cariama cristata or Chunga burmeisteri) of grasslands and scrubby areas of South America, which feed on snakes, frogs, worms, and insects.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A remarkable South American bird, whose name is as unsettled in orthography as is its position in the ornithological system.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) either of two large South American birds related to the cranes, the cariama of Southern Brazil (Cariama cristata, formerly Dicholophus cristata) or the Chunga burmeisteri of Argentina. They have an erectile crest and a short, broad bill. They are often domesticated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Either of two species of bird in the family Cariamidae, endemic to South America.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Brazilian Cariama; sole representative of the genus Cariama
  • noun Argentinian Cariama

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from Tupí sariema.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Native name.

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Examples

  • The seriema-hoatzin clade was closely allied with a cuckoo-turaco clade.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • The two living seriema species are South American, but members of similar, closely related groups (the bathornithids and idiornithids) inhabited North America from the Eocene to the Miocene and Europe from the Eocene to the Oligocene.

    Terror birds Darren Naish 2006

  • The seriema-hoatzin clade was closely allied with a cuckoo-turaco clade.

    Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

  • Some of the most distinctive birds in the hotspot include two very large species, the rhea (Rhea americana) and the red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata), neither of which are endemic.

    Biological diversity in the Cerrado 2008

  • Tonni & Tambussi (1988) described the foot morphology of the Miocene psilopterine Psilopterus and showed that its foot claws were nearly identical to those of the living seriema Cariama cristata.

    Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • Tonni & Tambussi (1988) described the foot morphology of the Miocene psilopterine Psilopterus and showed that its foot claws were nearly identical to those of the living seriema Cariama cristata.

    More on phorusrhacids: the biggest, the fastest, the mostest out-of-placest Darren Naish 2006

  • The two living seriema species are South American, but members of similar, closely related groups (the bathornithids and idiornithids) inhabited North America from the Eocene to the Miocene and Europe from the Eocene to the Oligocene.

    Archive 2006-10-01 Darren Naish 2006

  • Red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) of the Cerrado grasslands of central Brazil.

    Cerrado 2007

  • The seriema is sort of the South American equivalent of Africa's Secretary Bird.

    Big Bird 2006

  • Unless there has been some revolution in higher-level avian cladistics I've been completely ignorant of, the seriema is considered a fairly close relative of these magnificent predators.

    Big Bird 2006

Comments

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  • "The sole extant member of the small and ancient family Cariamidae, which is also the sole surviving family of the Cariamae." So saith Wikipedia.

    April 29, 2009