Aethia psittacula · Epoch Explorer

The parakeet auklet is a small seabird of the North Pacific. Parakeet Auklets used to be placed on its own in the genus Cyclorrhynchus but recent morphological and genetic evidence suggest it should be placed in the genus Aethia, making them closely related to crested auklets and least auklets. It is associated with the boreal waters of Alaska, Kamchatka and Siberia. It breeds on the cliffs, slopes and boulder fields of offshore islands, generally moving south during the winter.

Art Sowls, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service · 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: parakeet aukletPBDB
Sits inside: AethiaPBDB
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 most 12 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

3 occurrences of Aethia psittacula on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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

3 occurrences

Holocene100%

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.

Aethia psittacula and its relatives

Holocene

Where Aethia psittacula and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

26 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Aethia psittacula, 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

2 references

A zooarchaeological study at Buldir Island, Western Aleutians, AlaskaLefevre et al., 1997 · Arctic Anthropology · journal article2
Dynamics of sea mammal and bird populations of the Bearing Sea region over the last several millenniaSavinetsky et al., 2004 · Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology · journal article1

Each of the 3 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 psittacula

Source: Wikipedia/Commons
Credit: Art Sowls, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Licence: Public Domain
Commercial use: the licence allows it

Structured light scan

Source: MorphoSource
Credit: LACM Ornithology
Licence: In Copyright
Commercial use: cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen: Aethia psittacula · LACM:Birds:107192

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Source: Wikipedia, “Parakeet auklet”
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 it Aethia through time Formations of the Holocene The world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pallas 1769)