It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

[2][3] The paradise jacamar was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[4][5] Linnaeus based his entry on the "swallow-tail'd king-fisher" that had been described and illustrated in 1743 by the English naturalist George Edwards in his multivolume A Natural History of Uncommon Bird.

[6] The paradise jacamar is now one of ten species placed in the genus Galbula that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson.

The subspecies are distributed thus:[3] The paradise jacamar mostly inhabits terra firme, várzea, and savanna forests, both primary and secondary.

[3] The paradise jacamar's diet is primarily Lepidoptera, Odonata, Diptera, and Hymenoptera, but it also takes other flying insects.