The GBIF database doesn't seem to be totally consistent in terms of data. The sources of the occurrences and species differ. Therefore, not too much effort is put into standardization. From species names to information about countries (such as the preceding NA case), you can see this in different parts of the database. Also, many records do not have the complete geo-referenced data, so be careful when analyzing the data. The REST API is documented at http://www.gbif.org/developer/summary.
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