Rioni River
However, the bird does not occur in Africa, except perhaps in Linnaeus's time in Mediterranean coastal areas where they might have been introduced during the Roman Empire. The type locality was later fixed to the Rioni River in western Georgia – known as "Phasis" to the Ancient Greeks. These birds, until the modern era, constituted the bulk of the introduced stock in parts of Europe that was not already present; the birds described by Linnaeus's sources, though typically belonging to such early introductions, would certainly have more alleles in common with the transcaucasian population than with others. The scientific name is Latin for "pheasant from Colchis", "colchicus" referring to the west of modern-day Georgia; the Ancient Greek term corresponding to the English "pheasant" is Phasianos ornis (Φασιανὸς ὂρνις), "bird of the river Phasis". Although Linnaeus included many Galliformes in his genus "Phasianius"—such as the domestic chicken and its wild ancestor the red junglefowl, nowadays "Gallus gallus"—today only the common and the green pheasant are placed in this genus. As the latter was not known to Linnaeus in 1758, the common pheasant is naturally the type species of "Phasianus".