Aethia

Aethia is a genus of four small (85–300g) auklets endemic to the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk and among some of North America's most abundant seabirds. The relationships between the four true auklets remains unclear. Auklets are threatened by invasive species such as Norway rats because of their high degree of coloniality and crevice-nesting.

Aethia

L. Lauber · Public Domain · 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
aukletPBDB
Sits inside
AethiiniPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
Life habit
ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Charadriiformes

Time the record covers

At least 496 million years on record.

The record covers at least 497 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 504.5 Mya to 0 Mya.

Cambrian — about 2 of 20 occurrencesOrdovician — about 0 of 20 occurrencesSilurian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesDevonian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesCarboniferous — about 0 of 20 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 20 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 20 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 20 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 20 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 20 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 20 occurrencesPleistocene — about 5 of 20 occurrences515–497 Mya — about 2 occurrences497–480 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–0 Mya — about 18 occurrences497 Mya11.7 ka515 Mya0 Mya

20 occurrences of Aethia on record. 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

20 occurrences

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

4 formations

San Mateo — 33.20°N, 117.37°WMonterey — 33.56°N, 117.71°WHuaqiao — 28.72°N, 109.97°EPaotaishan — 31.38°N, 120.93°E

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The named rock units Aethia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

183 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Aethia, 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

9 references

Each of the 20 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 content2

Picture of Aethia

Credit
L. Lauber
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

Structured light scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Aethia pygmaea · USNM:BIRDS:USNM 344544

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 itAethiini through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Merrem 1788