Palaeophasianus is an extinct genus of flightless Geranoididae birds that lived in North America during the Eocene period. Robert Wilson Shufeldt classified Palaeophasianus as a galliform when he described it in 1913. However it was transferred to Cracidae in 1964 by Pierce Brodkorb, while Joel Cracraft in 1968 placed it in Gruiformes.[1] [2]
The only species in this genus is P. meleagroides, and it is described as a "ground-dwelling carnivore". The fossil remains were found by the American Museum expedition of 1910 in Big Horn County, Wyoming, in the Willwood formation (early Eocene).