fauna
Americannoun
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faunas,
plural
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faunae
plural
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the animals of a given region or period considered as a whole.
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a treatise on the animals of a given region or period.
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(initial capital letter) Bona Dea.
noun
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all the animal life of a given place or time, esp when distinguished from the plant life (flora)
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a descriptive list of such animals
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faunas
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of fauna
1765–75; < New Latin, special use of Latin Fauna, a feminine counterpart to Faunus; cf. Flora
Explanation
When you go on a nature walk in a school setting, your teacher might tell you to observe the flora and fauna in the woods. Flora is plant life; fauna refers to animals. Fauna derives from the name of a Roman goddess, but the handiest way to remember the difference between flora and fauna is that flora sounds like flowers, which are part of the plant world; fauna, however, sounds like "fawn," and fawns are part of the animal kingdom.
Vocabulary lists containing fauna
Physical Geography - Introductory
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Physical Geography - Middle School
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Furthermore, the discovery reinforces Rio Grande do Sul’s status as one of the world’s most important regions for the study of Triassic fauna.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 10, 2026
It is believed to be home to more than 100 plant species and rich invertebrate fauna, and is recognised as one of the most important chalk river habitats in England.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026
Excursions are led by Orvis-endorsed guide Scott Penn, who covers the history, flora and fauna of the region along the way.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
The government insists it has met all "green" requirements and has pledged to protect Great Nicobar's peoples, communities, as well as its unique flora and fauna, by establishing protected zones.
From Barron's ● May 18, 2026
American fauna 14,000 years ago was far richer than it is today.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
The winding evolutionary paths that these feathered faunae took to become so diverse, however, remains a mystery.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 4, 2024
This would be the more important as, with the exception of Brazil, hardly anything is known of the shore faunae upon the greater part of the South American coast.
From Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence by Louis Agassiz
"These repeated incursions into freshwater at the early divergence stage likely accelerated speciation, and are key factors in explaining the extraordinary hyper-diversity of otophysans in modern freshwater faunas."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 3, 2025
"This is one of the most diverse marine faunas seen anywhere, at any time in history, and it existed just before the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs went extinct," Dr Longrich said.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2024
What we argue in the new paper is that several of the faunas are upper Campanian or lower Maastrichtian, and thus date to perhaps 72 Ma or so.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 28, 2015
“Definitely there was a change in population leading up to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, so something was happening to the faunas prior to the impact,” he said.
From US News ● Feb. 24, 2011
Successive faunas and floras were created only to be extinguished by general cataclysms.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
