Aechmophorus occidentalis
The western grebe is a species in the grebe family of water birds. Folk names include "dabchick", "swan grebe" and "swan-necked grebe".

dominic sherony · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- western grebePBDB
- Sits inside
- AechmophorusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Aechmophorus occidentalis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
16 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
3 formations
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The named rock units Aechmophorus occidentalis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Aechmophorus occidentalis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Aechmophorus occidentalis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
663 taxa- Fulica americana6 sites
- Branta canadensis5 sites
- Camelops5 sites
- Equus5 sites
- Chendytes lawi4 sites
- Nothrotherium shastense4 sites
- Odocoileus hemionus4 sites
- Oxyura jamaicensis4 sites
- Pelecanus erythrorhynchos4 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps4 sites
- Aenocyon dirus3 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos3 sites
- Anatidae3 sites
- Ardenna grisea3 sites
- Aythya affinis3 sites
- Bubo virginianus3 sites
- Callipepla californica3 sites
- Gavia arctica3 sites
- Gavia immer3 sites
- Mammuthus3 sites
- Megalonyx3 sites
- Phalaropus lobatus3 sites
- Phoebastria albatrus3 sites
- Phoenicopterus copei3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Aechmophorus occidentalis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
11 references- Fossil birds from Manix Lake, California5
- Avian fossils from the marine Pleistocene of southern California2
- New Record of Capybara (Rodentia: Caviidae: Hydrochoerinae) from the Pleistocene of San Diego County, California with Remarks on Their Biogeography and Dispersal in the Pleistocene of Western North America1
- Avian material from Rancho del Oro, a Pleistocene locality in San Diego County, California1
- The Camp Cady Local Fauna: Paleoenvironment of the Lake Manix Basin1
- A Pleistocene avifauna from Jalisco, Mexico1
- Marine studies of San Pedro Bay, California1
- Pleistocene birds from the Valley of Mexico1
- A new fossil bird locality near Playa del Rey, California, with description of a new species of sulid1
- The fauna of Burnet Cave, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico1
- Fossil birds from the Equus Beds of Oregon1
Each of the 16 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Aechmophorus occidentalis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- dominic sherony
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAechmophorus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lawrence 1858)